Omaha High School

About this property

Omaha Central High School, originally known as Omaha High School, is a fully accredited public high school located in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, United States. It is one of many public high schools located in Omaha. As of the 2023–2024 academic year, Omaha Central had an enrollment of 2,674 students. The current building, located in Downtown Omaha, was designed by John Latenser, Sr. and was built between 1900 and 1912. It is the oldest active high school building in the city. On November 10, 1859, Omaha Central High School began as Omaha High School in the Nebraska Territory capitol building. In 1869, after the territorial government was removed from Omaha and moved to Lincoln, the capitol building was donated to the City of Omaha by the Nebraska state government for educational use only. In 1870, it was demolished. In 1872, it was replaced by a four-story building that hosted kindergarten through twelfth grades, designed by Gurdon P. Randall in the Second Empire style. In 1900, a new building was begun that encircled the second school, which was dismantled by 1912. Kindergarten through eighth grade were moved to the neighboring Central Elementary School. A gym was added to Central in 1930, and this building is still in use today. The Eagles compete in Class A, the largest classification in Nebraska according to the Nebraska School Activities Association. Throughout its history, Omaha Central has won numerous state championships in various sports. Many graduates have gone on to participate in collegiate athletics. The football and soccer teams compete at Seeman Stadium located on campus. The boys' and girls' basketball games and volleyball matches are played at the Central High gymnasium. The baseball and softball teams compete at Boyd Stadium, a renovated park three miles northeast of the campus. In 2007, the Eagles became the only high school in Nebraska to have won championships in three main sports in the same calendar year. As a result, Central was ranked by Sports Illustrated as one of the top 10 high-school athletic programs in the country. The high school's newspaper is The Register. In 1986 Quill and Scroll officially declared The Register the oldest continuously published newspaper west of the Mississippi. After running a controversial story in 2001, the staff and the paper were rebuked by the administration. The story reported on a football player continuing to play, despite two assault charges. The charges, as stated in the school's handbook, should have led to a dismissal from the team. After running the story, the paper was threatened with being shut down. The school advisor received support from media outlets on the local and national level. This support stopped the paper from being shut down.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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