A Huntington History Lesson
Huntington High School was built over parts of 1957-58 on a 36 acre parcel of land carved out from the old H. Bellas Hess estate that encompassed several hundred acres stretching from New York to Oakwood Road. The entire Big H Shopping Center was constructed on land that once made up part of the estate.
The original sections of the high school building cost $4.77 million to construct. In 1964, a large addition was made to the existing structure at a cost of $1.425 million. In October 1977, the district owed $3,300,175 on the bonds used to finance the building's construction. The debt was completely satisfied during the 1994/95 school year.
After the extension was completed the building contained 81 regular classrooms, 22 smaller classrooms, 16 larger classrooms, two cafeterias, a gym and an auditorium.
The building has 272,905 gross square feet. Its capacity as currently utilized is 1,584 students. Full utilization, including converting office space back into the classroom space that was intended by architects, would increase capacity to 2,038 students based upon State Education Department guidelines and the district's current class size policy.