On Oct. 29, 1877, the City of Bryan voted to establish a free public graded school, a very progressive step in an era of private schools. Interested citizens immediately bought and donated this block for the site, and financial help came from the George Peabody Foundation, a philanthropic agency devoted to education in the post-Civil War South. The cornerstone was laid in 1879, and the first session opened in the fall of 1880 with noted East Texas educator Percy V. Pennybacker (1860-99) as principal. There were five other teachers and seven grades. The top floor of the 3-story brick building was the auditorium, used for chapel, calisthenics, and other programs, with dormer windows set into the roof. Classrooms were on the first and second floors, and wood-burning stoves heated the building throughout. The schoolyard had a boys' side and a girls' side, each with an arbor with benches and tables where pupils ate lunches brought from home, and a cistern with tin cups chained to its rim provided water. Outmoded by 1919, the old graded, or east side, school became an adjunct to a new structure built that year and housed a gymnasium, cafeteria, and shop department before it was razed in 1949.