Oliver P Morton High School History 

Oliver P. Morton High School is a public secondary school located in Hammond, Indiana. It is part of the School City of Hammond district.

Vision

A community dedicated to teaching and learning.^[1]

Mission statement

The mission of Morton High School is to encourage, enable, and challenge each student to master basic skills, become a critical thinker, gain self-esteem, develop a strong work ethic, and comprehend his/her importance as a productive citizen in the global community.^[1]

History

The school was established in 1937 at its former location on Marshall Avenue in the Hessville section of Hammond. It became a four year school in 1954.^[2] The current facility opened in 1968.^[3]

 

Old Oliver P. Morton School – Hammond IN

Description

"The new structure is 3 stories in height and is built around a court which is landscaped as a formal garden. On the ground floor are 12 classrooms, a band room, shop, kindergarten, 2 museums, girls' and boys' shower and locker rooms, lunchrooms, and kitchen. The first floor has 12 classrooms, administration offices, an auditorium seating 800, and a gymnasium with bleachers sating 600. On the second floor are a library, 6 classrooms, and rooms for domestic science, sewing, art, physiology, and general science. The boiler room, a separate 1-story building, encloses the court on one side. Construction is fireproof and the exterior walls are faced with pressed brick and trimmed with stone and marble. The project was completed in June 1937 at a construction cost of $543,702 and a project cost of $580,083."
(Short and Brown)

"The Oliver P. Morton School pictured above was located at 7040 Marshall Avenue in the Hessville area of Hammond, Indiana. It was constructed in 1936-37 with partial funding from the Depression era Public Works Administration and based upon a design by architects George Grant Elmslie and William S. Hutton. This school replaced the original Morton School, which was built at the same Marshall Avenue location in 1912 by the community of Hessville before it was annexed by the city of Hammond. When it opened in the fall of 1937 Morton School served almost 600 students in grades kindergarten through ten. For the eleventh and twelfth grades, students attended Hammond High School. The size of the building was increased with a three story addition to each wing in 1952, and the school expanded to a four year high school in 1953 with the first class graduating in June 1954. The building housed Oliver P. Morton High School until the class of 1967 graduated. At that time, a new Oliver P. Morton High School building opened at 169th Street and Grand Avenue and the building on Marshall Avenue housed Morton junior high/middle school until it was demolished in 1991. The two story building to the far right in the picture is the elementary school that was constructed in 1956-57 for grades K-6. The junior high students remained in the high school building. This old elementary school was demolished in 1992. A modern elementary school now occupies this Marshall Avenue site.

When the building opened in 1937 the principal was Mr. C.A. Spencer. Mr. Albert W. Clark became principal in 1942 and remained in that position until the summer of 1962. Mr. W. Winston Becker, who had been a teacher and administrator at Morton, succeeded Mr. Clark as principal. Mr. Becker continued as high school principal in the new building on Grand Avenue."

 

 

Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (August 4, 1823 – November 1, 1877), commonly known as Oliver P. Morton, was a U.S. Republican Party politician from Indiana. He served as the 14th Governor of Indiana during the American Civil War, and was a stalwart ally of President Abraham Lincoln. During the war, Morton thwarted and neutralized the Democratic-controlled Indiana General Assembly. He exceeded his constitutional authority by calling out the militia without approval, and during the period of legislative suppression he privately financed the state government through unapproved federal and private loans. He was criticized for arresting and detaining political enemies and suspected southern sympathizers. But the famous "War Governor" unquestionably did more to help the war effort than any other man in the state, and earned the lifelong gratitude of former Union soldiers for his support.

Morton was an Indiana native born in Wayne County near the small settlement of Salisbury on August 4, 1823. His family name, Throckmorton, had been shortened to Morton by his grandfather, but the males in the family carried Throck as a middle name. He was named for Oliver Hazard Perry, the victorious Commodore in the Battle of Lake Erie.^[2] He disliked his name from an early age, and before beginning his political career he shortened his name to Oliver Perry Morton, from Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton. His mother died when he was three, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He spent most of his young life living with them in Ohio.^[2]

Morton and his older brother did not complete high school, but together they apprenticed to become hat makers.^[2] As a teenager, he moved to Centerville, Indiana to take up his trade. After four years in the business he became dissatisfied with his profession and decided to instead pursue a career in law. He enrolled at Miami University in 1843 and studied there until 1844. He then briefly attended Cincinnati College to continue his law studies. In 1845 he returned to Centerville where he was admitted to the bar. He formed a law practice with Judge Newman and became a successful and moderately wealthy attorney

Morton is memorialized in the United States Capitol as one of Indiana's two statues on the National Statuary Hall Collection. There are also two statues of him in downtown Indianapolis, in front of the Indiana Statehouse and as part of the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Monument Circle. Another statue stands on the second floor of the Wayne County Courthouse in Richmond, Indiana where a previous high school was named for him and the central section of the current high school is named Morton Hall in his honor. Morton Senior High School in Hammond, Indiana, home of the Morton Governors, is named after him,^[49] as is Morton County, Kansas.

A statue of Governor Morton also serves as the State of Indiana's memorial at Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in honor of his role as a powerful wartime governor.