Located at about 48th Street and Division Avenue, Kellogsville High School seemed a long way out in the 1940s yet. It was somewhat associated with Home Acres, given that there was nothing directly like Godwin Heights in the area surrounding the school. Nor was there a lot of tax base to speak of. The school was akin to a rural school in many ways, yet a reasonably large school as rural schools went. Perhaps it was intended to provide a foundation for the hoped for development of the area. The businessmen behind the development of Home Acres apparently had big dreams for a thriving metropolis. But somehow events always intervened to prevent this. The Great Depression. Then WWII. And after the war there was the expansion of the suburbs, and that could occur anywhere. Grand Rapids was becoming land bound, and the concept of the city was losing momentum as more and more people took to the automobile. So Home Acres, like Burton Heights, Godwin Heights, and the Southlawn district, gradually started to lose their meaning as shopping centers. One had the rise of the shopping mall, something made possible by the automobile, which could be located almost anywhere. In year 2006 Burton Heights is a mere shell of what it was in the 1960s yet. And Godwin Heights, Southlawn, and Home Acres, are but vague names in a continuum of stores between 28th and 68th Streets.
So apparently Kellogsville High School remained cocked and ready for a large explosion of students that essentially never materialized. Unlike Godwin, which had the GM stamping plant on 36th Street as a source of tax revenue from 1936 to the present day, there was little industry in the Kellogsville area, and the school had to, and did, make do with less funding. The relative lack of residential growth in the area in the 1960s yet in turn meant that there would be little push for more facilities and growth at Kellogsville.
But as can be seen in the 1940 and 1945 Kellogsville annuals below, the high school experience was in all essential ways the same. It's not clear whether Kellogsville had a founding father analogous to Charles Saur, but from the annuals it appears that once again the connection between money and success can be over played, and that in all fundamental ways the Kellogsville students were well prepared for life in the wider world after graduation.
1940 Kellogsville class annual.
1945 Kellogsville class annual.
A new building program commenced in the early 1920s in the Kellogsville area as well as the Godwin Heights area. The entire area along Division Avenue, between about 28th Street and 68th Street was growing rapidly. In general the US economy was doing well, and farm land all over the region was being platted for new homes. This would go on until late 1929.
With the growth came the need for more classrooms and facilities. A year before Godwin, the Kellogsville system constructed a new building along Division Avenue, and just four years later, in 1927, added a second unit just to the south of the first one. In 1936 a new highschool building was added on Jean Street, on the north side of the road.
The images above were provided by Mildred Annis, class of 1940.
Left click on the images below for larger versions.
