Many of Pine Bluff High School’s buildings haven’t changed since a campus-wide remodel was completed in 1975.
Melinda Mayo and Ryan Houston noticed that when they visited their alma mater last year.
“It was crazy how much it had not changed,” said Mayo, who was known as Melinda Dodds when she graduated in 1983, two decades before Houston. “When Ryan joined our staff last year, I said, ‘Hey, let’s go to our old high school and kind of walk the halls together.'”
Mayo is a meteorologist and Houston an anchor on the KATV morning show “Daybreak.” They’ve been back at “The High” on more than one occasion just to walk the campus again, if they weren’t speaking at an assembly and encouraging young people to follow the examples of Martin Luther King Jr.
“Even 20 years apart, our experiences were so much the same,” Mayo remarked.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
She could still locate where the classroom of her old senior-year homeroom teacher, Jerrel Boast. “It was in the Patterson building, first room on the right,” she recalled.
This week, one of Arkansas’ most legendary high school campuses will begin to take on a new shape.
Groundbreaking for the new PBHS is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the front lawn of the campus at 711 W. 11th Ave. Beginning Monday, 11 of the buildings will be taken down: the Trice, McGeorge and Patterson classroom buildings, Trice Gym, arts center, cafeteria, McFadden Gymnasium, Student Center, JROTC, Dunaway Fieldhouse and old weight room.
Mayo needed a minute just to take in the thought of those buildings coming down.
“Years before you were headed to high school, you knew that was Pine Bluff High, and it was such a beautiful campus,” she said. “You thought you were driving by a college. It seemed like it was laid out like a college. And you think, someday I’m going to go to school here and figure out all these big buildings and where I’m supposed to go. So, it was always such a big part of our lives, and of course going to Zebra football games, even going to high school, just being on that campus, it’s crazy to me to think that’s not going to be there, and it’s not going to look like that anymore.”
McFadden was home to a number of state championship basketball teams, including the last two in the Class 5A boys division. The Zebras also won the title in the old 5A — then Arkansas’ largest-school classification — during Houston’s senior year.
“I’m really sad all of those buildings are leaving, especially the gym,” Houston said. “I was on the Turkey Court my senior year and I just performed in the gym with the History Club as well. I’m sad all of that is going away, and I hope they find a way to keep some of those old buildings or maybe make a special walkway or something, because it’s a lot of history that’s going to be gone.”
Walking inside the gym for an assembly, Mayo said, gave her chills.
“Just that band was playing and the cheerleaders were cheering, and I got goosebumps thinking, ‘This looks exactly like I did when I was here,'” she said. “Just knowing that gym is going to be gone, that is a strange, surreal thing.”
The 1975 remodel modernized PBHS, then one of Arkansas’ largest campuses in enrollment. Welcoming the students was a “catwalk” — in this case, a skywalk — linking the McGeorge and Patterson buildings with the words “Pine Bluff High School” adorned.
The catwalk, however, has not been in use in recent years due to its deteriorating condition.
“I definitely remember walking on the catwalk,” Houston said. “I was surprised that was closed. But it sort of takes you back in time when things were a lot simpler.”
Houston remembered his aunt playing in the Zebra band and babysitting him at the school while his mother was working.
“I would walk with my aunt to band practice and see these big buildings,” Houston said. “The buildings were white, and as Melinda mentioned, it felt like I was on a college campus. I’ll never forget going into the band room with her. She played the trombone.”
Students were allowed to leave campus for lunch when Mayo and Houston attended. The wide-open space at PBHS drew concern among a later generation of students, some of whom marched out of class in March 2022 and gathered at Jordan Stadium to protest a lack of safety measures amid a wave of violence in the city and possible relocation to Jack Robey Junior High School on South Olive Street.
Plans for the new PBHS, scheduled for substantial completion by June 30, 2026, call for a two-story structure of 172,500 square feet to replace at least 189,000 square feet of demolished space. The guaranteed maximum price for the construction is almost $74 million, about $12 million of which will be covered by state funding approved in 2021 and the rest the district will foot thanks to a millage increase voters approved last August.
It was announced in May the new PBHS would include a career and technical education center, media lab, kitchen and dining hall, 7,500-square-foot practice gymnasium and tornado shelter, 2,200-seat basketball arena, 900-seat auditorium and central courtyard.
Meanwhile, students will attend the Jack Robey campus during construction, after all. The campus was named after the superintendent when Mayo was a senior.
“I was on the Pine Cone newspaper staff — one of the other things I did — and one of my first big assignments was to interview the brand new superintendent who had just been hired for Pine Bluff School District, and it was Jack Robey,” Mayo said. (Houston, who attended Jack Robey before PBHS, reacted: “Oh, wow!”)
District Superintendent Jennifer Barbaree and assistant superintendent Kelvin Gragg said basketball games will be played at the Dollarway High School Fieldhouse on Dollarway Road. The gymnasium hosted games through the 2022-23 school year when Dollarway High, then on Fluker Avenue, was still in existence before merging with PBHS.
The PBHS Academy, which opened in or around 2009, will stay open. Then-Superintendent Frank Anthony initially had the Academy designed for Advanced Placement classes, but it’s been since multipurpose and used for a variety of classes, district communications coordinator Kimberley West said.
Jordan Stadium will remain open for football and Hill-Alford Field, once the home of National Little League baseball, will still host softball games. New football ticket booths will be constructed and the track at Albert S. Alexander Field will be resurfaced, but no additions will be made to Jordan Stadium until the project is completed.
Also, a portion of the northeast parking lot will remain intact.
The legacy of PBHS being the centerpiece of a midtown neighborhood will last, but the look of a college campus won’t anymore.
“I know this is kind of bittersweet for us because we went there, but, you know from the layouts I’ve seen and some of the changes that’ll take place, I’m hoping that this will give students the space they need, this will help that neighborhood and this will help the city push out the best and brightest for years to come,” Houston said.
Ryan Houston and Melinda Mayo, an anchor and meteorologist on KATV’s “Daybreak,” talk with Pine Bluff High School students during an assembly at McFadden Gymnasium on Sept. 28, 2023. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)
The veterans’ memorial in front of the library and principal’s office at Pine Bluff High School is pictured Thursday, June 13, 2024. The McGeorge Building, which contains the library and office, is expected to be demolished along with other structures to make way for a new high school. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)
George N. Holmes Jr., a 1976 Pine Bluff High School graduate who died while serving in the U.S. Marines on a mission in Iran, is memorialized in the front of the campus. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)
McFadden Gymnasium is pictured before a Feb. 1, 2024, game between Pine Bluff and Hot Springs high schools. The gymnasium, which will be demolished, opened in 1951. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)
An area of the McGeorge Building where a fountain once operated is pictured Thursday, June 13, 2024. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)
A construction stone indicates 1975 as the year Pine Bluff High School was widely remodeled. Many of the buildings from that year will be demolished. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)