Tuesday, 1/14

You wouldn't think it wouldn't be that hard to find more than one picture of the place. But apparently it is.

We're now at T minus nine days before the big “North Marquette/South Marquette” show at Kaufman, and I have to laugh at something. When we started putting this all together, Jack & I were a little worried that we wouldn't have enough pictures to fill out the show. When we started we had, I think, 35 or so pictures, and because we're talking about areas of the city that weren't photographed a lot, we were a little concerned.

Well, we're now up to over 200, so I think we're safe.

However, there is one particular place that has stymied our attempts to find suitable pictures, and that would be the old North Marquette school. Specifically, this place--

This is the only known picture of the place, and this was scanned from an old brochure the Marquette school system put out in the late 40s when they were trying to raise a millage. Other than that one picture, there's no photographic proof the place existed. Jack doesn't have a picture of it, the History Center doesn't have a picture of it; heck, even the Marquette Area Public Schools doesn't have a picture of it.

It was a school for almost 70 years. You'd think SOMEONE would've taken more than one photograph of it.

Actually, I can't say I'm that surprised. I had mentioned yesterday that one of the things I did Sunday while being serenaded by a barking dog was writing a newspaper article for the show. The article, specifically, focuses on the original schools of the neighborhood—the Hampton School, and the North Marquette school. One of the things both the article and the show we're putting on discusses was how both of these neighborhoods were looked down upon by the “important people”. After all, both North & South Marquette were home to Marquette's immigrant, working class families. There weren't fancy buildings or rich people around, so not a lot of respect was accorded them by city leaders.

Or, apparently, by city photographers.

Thankfully, the people who went to those two schools have shared a lot of great stories with me about going to them, and we'll pass those along next Thursday. It's just a shame that we don't have more than one picture of the North Marquette school to go along with those stories.

(jim@wmqt.com)