Newmarket High School 4.24

Newmarket High School is an Ontario secondary school located at 505 Pickering Crescent, off Mulock Drive in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. It is one of four high schools in Newmarket under the jurisdiction of the York Region District School Board and currently educates approximately 1214 students from Grades 9 to 12. The phoenix and the Viking are the school's symbols and the school's colours are purple and gold.HistoryThe school was founded in 1843 as a "grammar school", located on Raglan Street in Newmarket. As an institution, Newmarket High School is the third oldest high school in Ontario (oldest being Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute c. 1792 and Jarvis Collegiate Institute c. 1807) and oldest in York Region). This original school, which could accommodate 46 students, was built at a cost of $75.However, by the 1870s, Newmarket's growth had rendered the original school inadequate to the task of educating the town's youth. So, in 1876, at a cost of $6,000, a new building was constructed at the corner of Pearson and Prospect Streets in Newmarket, where the school was located for most of its history.On March 16, 1893, a temperamental wood-burning furnace put an end to this building and its additions when it set off a fire that burnt the school to the ground.In 1894, a new building was built on the same site, incorporating the innovation of electricity. This building stood until March 31, 1928, when yet another fire, this one of mysterious origin, once again utterly reduced the school to ashes. The fires led to the adoption of the orange Phoenix bird as the school's official symbol.