A small school was opened in 1890 in a hall over a building at 38th and Woodland. The district was suburban. The following year a tract of land was bought at 39th and Euclid, the present location of the Horace Mann School. About the same time a two-room brick building which stood on this ground burned and a four-room frame school building was built to replace it. It was not until nine years later, in 1899, that this school was taken into the Kansas City public school system. At this time there were 229 pupils and a faculty of four teachers. The city was pushing rapidly to the south and the neighborhood became one of comfortable homes. The board of education added another teacher to the faculty and rented the basement of the Ivanhoe Church to use as a classroom. In 1904, the first unit of the Horace Mann School was erected, a kindergarten was added and domestic science was taught for the first time. A second unit was added in 1906, completing the structure, and Horace Mann School was carved above the arched entrance. A history of the school written by Mrs. Alva R. Hamilton in 1925 lists some of the pupils heard from in the professional and business world: LeRoy Daniel MacMorris, artist; Professor Donald Davenport, Columbia University, New York; Marie Etwein, commercial artist, Chicago; Davis Lowe, paymaster of the U.S. ship, South Dakota.The following have remained in Kansas City: LeRoy Daniel MacMorris; Charles Otter (chain of drug stores); Fred Toomey, teacher at Manual Training High School; Harry Heitman, Art Dept. of the Bemis Bag Co.; Walter Barnes, attorney; Walter Atkins, osteopath; Russel Page, insurance. The postcard was mailed in June 1915 by Sadie to her Aunt Carrie Maynard, Beloit, Kan., and reads: Charles graduates tomorrow. Wish you could have been here. Today the school board is wrestling with the problem of whether to close or renovate the old school. Kansas City Times, August 3, 1979.
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