Top photo: the John Allen building on the Pine Bluff High School campus. It was built in 1907-08, and torn down (bottom photo) in 1973. I attended PBHS during 1969-1972 and had many classes in the Allen building. The other two old buildings on the campus were the Junius Jordan Building (1918) and the Woodrow Wilson building (1924, originally used as the junior high school).
Both of the above photos are from the 1974 PBHS Annual. Most of the PBHS annuals are digitized and
viewable at the Pine Bluff library website. For some reason the 1969 annual (yearbook) isn't uploaded. I'll have to see if I can correct that oversight. The bottom photo must have been taken in the early summer of '73, before the 1973-74 school year began. The John Allen building was the first of the three old buildings to be torn down. I recently found, on microfilm in the library, an article and photo in the
Pine Bluff Commercial from June 4, 1973, about the beginning of the John Allen building demolition. And I actually remember seeing the beginning of the demolition that summer, and being shocked by it, because I felt I was partly responsible for it.
In the '71-'72 school year, as editorial editor of the Pine Cone, I'd written a few editorials saying the old buildings were fire hazards, implying without realizing it that they should be torn down and replaced by new buildings. A reporter from the Commercial interviewed me in January 1972 about my editorials, so I'm on record as supporting the demolition of those beautiful early 20th Century Pine Bluff High School buildings, designed by Charles Thompson. Talk about Ink on His Face! But I'm not sure what else could have been done with them, and they were fire hazards.
So the demolition of the old buildings began 51 years ago, and the class of 1973 was the last senior class to attend classes in the John Allen building.
The night I saw the beginning of the John Allen building demolition, which would have been close to the time it started, I was at a party in the Broadmoor neighborhood and Brian Carty, a classmate of mine, told me the building was being torn down. Then he drove me and someone else (don't remember who) in his new VW Beetle over to look at the beginning of the demolition. This must have been the first weekend of June in '73. Two other things I remember from that night are: being told that the McDonald's in Pine Bluff had just started serving breakfast, and hearing the song "Monster Mash" on Brian's car radio. Brian changed stations when it came on, and I sort of registered a complaint, saying I hadn't heard it in a long time. Brian registered a counter-complaint. He said "They're playing it all the time now." It was the beginning of the "oldies" radio sensation for my generation! A bigtime radio business now. What would it be like without such nostalgic songs easily listened to on the radio airwaves or satellite radio? It would be a lot more nostalgic to hear the 60s and 70s songs, that's what. "They're playing them all time now."
I now live a block from the Pine Bluff High School campus, which is currently (again) being demolished, or at least all the buildings are. The football stadium is not. The McFadden Fieldhouse was left standing 50 years ago, and so was the modern building with the cafeteria and the band and choir classrooms in it. But these buildings are being torn down now along with the 50 year old ones.
Above and below: Goodbye McFadden Fieldhouse.
The football stadium in the background.
The John Allen building stood in the approximate
area where the sign is in these pictures.
This year, 2024-25, PBHS classes are being held at what was
formerly Jack Robey Junior High, on south Olive Street.
Vintage postcards of the John Allen building (above) and the Junius Jordan building (below).
The statue David O. Dodd, "the boy hero of the Confederacy," was moved to the front of the Jefferson County courthouse before the demolition of the Allen building in '73, and thus it's missing in the first photo from the '74 annual (top of page). Last year it was moved again, this time to a more appropriate location,
Camp White Sulphur Springs Confederate Cemetery outside of Pine Bluff.
And one more (below), showing, at the bottom left to right, McFadden Fieldhouse, the Wilson building, and the building with the band and choir classrooms and the cafeteria. And the hole where the Allen building had been. The other photos show a snow-covered hill and a basketball game inside McFadden Fieldhouse. There were very few hills in Pine Bluff, so it's a safe bet that this one is at the Pine Bluff County Club, where I went sledding as a kid during some of the few times it snowed back then in Pine Bluff.
As the text says, there was an ice storm in January 1974. I was there and remember driving my 4-on-the-floor 1972 Toyota Corona on the ice-covered parking lot next to TG&Y in the Jefferson Square shopping center, skidding and sliding in circles in the car, and also "skiing" along next to my car holding on to the open driver's side door and the roof.
I was enrolled in a Vo-Tech electronics course at Pines Vocational Technical School after dropping out of Hendrix College at the end of 1973, and I do recall the return that year to Daylight Savings Time in January (energy crisis), because it was still dark (as the text above notes) as late as 7:30 or 8 in the morning, because it was really 6:30 or 7. And January, and cold! The daytime (7:30-3:30) electronics course was not to my liking and I quit after one day.
I lived in a modern one-room cabin "riverhouse" my grandparents had built in 1969 next to the Arkansas River (no telephone) at the time. My parents didn't find out I'd quit the electronics course until March. Since I was unencumbered, instead of getting mad at me for wasting his money on the class, my dad asked me if I wanted to go to Costa Rica with him and his friend Joe Hardin from Grady.
I did. I enrolled in my first physics class that May, in the first semester of summer school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. My free and easy drop-out days were over then.
