Biography | Gloria Steinem — The Georgetown High School That Sent Her to Smith

In the summer of 1951 Gloria Steinem left East Toledo for Washington, D.C.

Her older sister, Susanne, lived a block from Western High School on Reservoir Road.

That house is private and is not this pin.

The pin is the school at 35th and R Streets Northwest, now the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Western was a public high school in a Classical Revival building finished in 1898.

It still occupies the block.

It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Steinem entered as a senior in September 1951.

She was elected class vice president and graduated 47th in a class of 141.

The date was 12 June 1952.

A vocational counselor and the vice principal wrote the recommendations that helped get her into Smith College, where Susanne had already gone.

The year at Western was the first stretch of ordinary school life after a childhood of trailers, a mother's illness, and an East Toledo house that was not a destination.

The alumni association later recorded that she called it one of the happiest school stretches she had.

In 1974 the arts program that became Duke Ellington moved into the same building.

Western as a comprehensive high school was phased out.

The limestone temple of learning is what a visitor finds.

The senior who left for Northampton left from this door.

Photo: Duke Ellington School of the Arts, formerly Western High School, APK, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.