Our articles this week and the next five weeks will deal mainly with the three major projects that occurred (and became intertwined) between 1889 and 1897 – the building of the Normal School, the Town Hall, and the “new” high school. During these years, Willimantic also went from being a borough of Windham to a city. The many town and/or city meetings relative to the high school and or “town building (as it was then called) were often contentious and reflected the “growing pains” of a rapidly expanding city. The discussions oftentimes carried on and on with a huge number of “resolutions” going back and forth. In these articles, I will try to focus individually on each project and to present only the most important resolutions brought forward at the meetings. The fifteen year period of 1883 to 1897 kept the town and later the city and town governments quite busy. On July 9, 1883, it was decided by a vote of 277 to 42 taken at a borough meeting, that public water works should be constructed to supply the village from the Natchaug river. The commissioners were at the same time authorized to issue bonds to the amount of $200,000 to carry out the plan. The building of the water system and later the sewer system went on for several years. Then, at the town meeting of February 15, 1888, the selectmen of the Town of Windham received a petition for a special town meeting to discuss whether of not the town would “establish and maintain a new high school within its limits. Also to be discussed was, “whether the town will take any steps by appointment of a committee…to secure the establishment of a State Normal School within its limits”. At the special meeting in February, bitterness and contentiousness reigned and the meeting was adjourned until March. At a more civil March, 1888 meeting, a committee was appointed to consider the building of and a site for a new “union school” (the term referring to the fact that the First and Second District high schools would be combined). The same committee was charged with “securing a new Normal School”. That committee did nothing about the high school for a couple years since the town’s Warden and Burgesses were more interested in the possibility of Willimantic being chosen as a location for the state’s latest Normal School. The many citizens present at an April, 1889 town meeting were unanimous in their belief that Willimantic would be the “most advantageous and desirable” location for the school. With that, a large committee was formed to arrange a reception for the members of the legislature’s school committee. They were to, “make an earnest effort to secure the location of the school in Willimantic. The “reception committee” did a splendid job and so, in June, 1889, the legislature approved funding of $50,000 to build the Normal School in Willimantic and $20,000 annually for its maintenance. Now it was up to the town to select and purchase a site for the school. Therefore, in July, 1889, a group of state educators, accompanied by State Secretary Harry Hine and an architect from New Haven arrived in Willimantic by train. They were met by a committee and were shown “several suitable sites”. They included the Chase lot on Windham Street, the Windham Company lot (where Memorial Park is today), the Hewitt lot on Prospect Street (today’s Hewitt Street), Young’s lot on Pleasant Street (between Lebanon Avenue and John Street), and the Lathrop lot on Pleasant Street (approximately opposite Quercus Avenue).  Days later, the lot on Windham and Valley Streets (across from the First District School at that time) was chosen. Part of the land was known as “the Chase lot”, part of it donated by the Windham Cotton Manufacturing Company and the rest already belonged to Windham County. Work was then begun on extending a sewer line along Valley Street to the school. That had been required by the state as a prerequisite for the building of the school. In May, 1890, at the same time Willimantic was completing its sewer connection to the approved lot for the new Normal School, State officials accepted the plans for the school building which was to be, ”a handsome and imposing structure three stories high…having a tower with a town clock, thus supplying a long felt need in Willimantic”. (Note in today’s photo that the tower was fitted for the proposed clock “faces”. However, there would be no “town clock” until the one on the town building was donated by James Hayden.)