ARCHITECTURAL SITES: Bossier City
Bossier City High School, 777 Bearkat Drive.
Architect: Jones, Roessle, Olschner, and Wiener.
Completed: 1940. Cost: $571,741 (including ticket office, black high school and elementary remodeling).
Historian’s Note: PWA Docket LA-1132-F. Cost included a $300,000 bond issue by Bossier parish school board. Built on an 11-acre site at the location of the old Civil War Fort Kirby Smith, one of the fortifications protecting Shreveport. Bossier High School is considered five-schools-in-one containing a classroom building, gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria and a manual-training shop. The complex is oriented to the southern climate with the architect given freedom from the restrictive school-building codes of the time. Included in the project was a high school for black students. PWA Docket LA-1132 or Bossier City Colored High School sometimes referred to as “Butler” in the records but unclear if this was the name of the high school.
Source: Sam Weiner Collection, LSU-S archives, (083/Box 2/Folder 25).
Source for black high school: Sam Wiener Collection, LSU-S archives (083/AD117/blueprints)
Bossier Parish - Haughton High School - photo by Neil Johnson
