HISTORY OF READING HIGH SCHOOL 


On November 2, 1852, the  City Union High School at Fourth and Court Streets in Reading, Pennsylvania opened its door to boys only. Thirty-five students were enrolled under the direction of Principal William H. Batt who was paid an annual salary of $800. The first high school commencement was not held until July 3, 1856 in the high school hall and graduated only four boys, In September 1857, thirty-eight girls began attending classes in an upper room of the boys' Academy building. The boys and girls were kept separate for two years until coeducation began in August of 1859.

Although the radical idea of coeducation was accepted early in the city of Reading, racial segregation continued until 1876, when the Academy building opened its doors to students of all races. When the high school enrollment had reached 325 students in 1881, School Board members ruled to abolish coeducation in the high school. In the fall of 1881, the boys were transferred to temporary quarters at Eighth and Penn Streets while a new Boys High School was being built. The young ladies formed an all-girls high school in the old Academy building. For the next four years, high school boys and girls were to be kept blocks away and taught entirely by teachers of their own sex. Both groups eventually moved into their own buildings on either side of Eighth and Washington Streets. The Girls High School eventually became the Reading School District Administration Building, and was eventually torn down and replaced by the present building. The Boys High School is now Reading City Hall. The Reading Senior High School in its present form was not completed until 1927.

On September 7, 1927, the coeducational high school at 13th and Douglass Streets, with accommodations for 1800 students, received the combined populations of the overcrowded Boys and Girls High Schools. The original enrollment was 1577 students, and the school graduated 166 boys and 165 girls in the first year. The original faculty of eighty-one members consisted largely of former teachers from the old Boys and Girls High Schools. The campus covered 19-1/2 acres and the school was built to resemble a medieval castle. This profound architecture soon inspired the nickname, "The Castle on the Hill." The construction cost of the main High School building was $1,650,000. In February 1929, a combined gymnasium for boys and girls was opened northeast of the main building. In 1930-31, an auto shop was constructed behind the main building. In 1939, an athletic practice field and cinder track, with a field house, was constructed on the terrace behind and to the south of the main building. In the early years of the high school, the school motto "Dic cur hic,"  or "Tell Me Why You Are Here," was adopted.
The history of Reading High School appears on the Class of 1958 website, and is used here with the kind permission of Dennis Nagle, their website creator and administrator
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