School changes but fright face lives on

Placer High School has seen many changes in the 83 years since this picture of a row of buses waiting for the school-day to end in front of the still-standing auditorium was captured for the Auburn Journal. But some things stay the same. In the center of both the "now" and "then" photos, the cartoonish "frightened face" remains, frozen in a fear-soaked vigil over the campus. The Mission revival-style auditorium — and a visage straight out of a "Casper the Friendly Ghost" cartoon — has managed to survive the years and changes in needs at the Auburn school. It underwent earthquake-proofing and an update in the 1970s and continues to anchor the stylish sweep of architectural class on Agard Street. Victim of time But the wooden building to its right — older and less architecturally beloved — did not. It's Placer High School's first gymnasium. Built to accommodate military training, the gym was completed in November 1917 at a cost of $13,000. With the Auburn school's sports palace still under construction, the basketball team trained for the coming season on an outdoor court on the schoolyard. By the mid-1920s, Placer High School's 1906 building was overflowing with an enrollment of 400 that included students from Loomis, Colfax and Penryn as well as Auburn. The school had started in 1897 as Auburn District High School in 1897, taking over the former Sierra Normal College on Agard. It became Placer County High School in 1901 but saw Lincoln break away into a new district in 1907 and Roseville follow five years later. In 1914, the school switched from the unwieldy Placer County Union High School moniker to Placer Union High School. Flush times for Auburn The school's auditorium was constructed during the heady financial boom times of the Roaring Twenties. District board members were able to convince voters in a bond election to put up $250,000 for the building, plus classrooms. The classrooms also remain standing today — across the courtyard from the front doors of the auditorium. The vote was 1,657 to 373. In contrast, the original 1906 building had cost $37,000. It too, was given a revamp in 1927. Architect on the auditorium was William Henry Weeks of Oakland. He also designed the Auburn Grammar School — built in 1915 and now Auburn City Hall. At the placing of the cornerstone on May 20, 1927, Weeks was there to help insert a time capsule containing editions of several newspapers, including the Auburn Journal, plus a photo of Principal John Engle. By spring 1936, Engle was set to retire at the end of the school year after 30 years as principal at Placer High. Another gym And by 1936, the old gym was ready to be replaced. The school population was up, 500 students were being bused daily to Placer and money was available for construction projects through a federal government looking for ways to juice the Depression-era economy with jobs. By the next year, what Auburn now knows and venerates as the Earl Crabbe Gym would be echoing with basketballs slapping against hardwood, chirping referee whistles and the roar of the hometown crowd. The first game was between Placer and the Stockton High School Tarzans. The Stockton nickname didn't last but the Crabbe gym has stood the test of time. The end arrives As for the old gym, it would serve its final years as a maintenance facility. In 1976, it would be torn down as part of a new round of construction that would see another gym built on campus — this time next to Earl Crabbe Gym. And yet another round of funding since then would result in new classrooms being built on the footprint of old wooden gym — blending in with the architectural style of the buildings Weeks deftly designed in the 1920s. Was the fright face an accident? Or an architect's inside joke? Weeks died in 1936 and the answer rests in peace with him. Media Life's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com or 530-852-0232. Thomson is a state and national award-winning reporter who writes for the Auburn Journal.