Queen Anne High School, high school in Washington, United States
Queen Anne High School is a historic school building in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, set on a hilltop and built from brick with detailed terra cotta ornamentation. The structure was designed in a style inspired by English palace architecture and originally housed classrooms, laboratories, and rooms for manual training and domestic science.
The building opened in 1909, when Seattle was growing fast after the Alaska Gold Rush and needed more space for students. It was expanded twice, in the 1920s and again in the 1950s, then closed in 1981 as enrollment fell and was later converted into apartments.
The name comes directly from the Queen Anne neighborhood, the hilltop district where the building stands. For decades, the school brought together students from across the city, giving the community a shared sense of place centered on this hill.
The building sits on a prominent hill in the Queen Anne neighborhood and can be spotted from many parts of the city, making it easy to find on foot. The old gymnasium and the outdoor athletic fields are open to the public as community spaces, though the residential interior is not accessible to visitors.
The school's grizzly bear mascot, adopted in 1930, was inspired by a wooden bear figure that stood on the roof of the Grizzly Inn restaurant across the street. Students made a habit of stealing bricks from the figure as a running joke, a tradition that passed down through generations of graduates.
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