|
Auditorium Wing Another addition became necessary for Marion High School. The school needed housing for speech, music, and drama departments. It also needed an auditorium, as most of its performances had been held at McCulloch Junior High Schools auditorium. 
McCullochs auditorium had been growing old and did not have many of the features that had become standard in most auditoriums of the time. Planning and construction for Marion High Schools auditorium wing began in the late 1960s.Final plans for building an auditorium wing were set by October of 1968. Bids totalled $3,177,000. Bowman Construction and Moorhead Electric had already begun work on the schools physical education wing. Construction was set to begin in January 1969. The wing was to be 85,000 square feet, and the auditorium itself was to have a capacity of 1,478. Construction went mostly as planned, with some exceptions ("Bid on Marion auditorium"). As construction proceeded, the finishing date got pushed back. By March of 1971, the expected time of completion had been moved to mid-summer 1971. The facility, "a dream come true," according to Jim Clark, a drama teacher at the time, also housed the art, music, speech, and drama departments. Classes began in these rooms at the beginning of the 1970-1971 school year. It had an incredible lighting and sound system. One construction worker commented, "Theres enough electricity in that building to light all of South Marion." There were 56 circuits for lighting, each of which could handle five 700-watt lights, for a total of 280 lights. The auditorium wing became an important part of marion High School and the community of Marion ("MHS auditorium to be done by the middle of the summer" 10). |