and the adjacent still all-girls population of the Western High School are located on the same huge joint campus at the northwest corner of West Cold Spring Lane and Falls Road.

Because of this seminal influence, the connecting structure at the new 1967 campus at Cold Spring and Falls (with a distinctive outside stone facade and engraving with the school name) between the two new building wings of the academic and engineering halls (future also renamed "Dehuff" and "Burkert Halls") which contains the hallowed Memorial Corridor filled with Poly historical and biographical wall plaques, displays and glass exhibit floor cabinets along with at the west end of the stained glass window, statue head bust and B.P.I.

The first building location designated in 1883 for the new manual training / technical school was located in part of a former grammar (elementary) school building on the earlier former site of the old central City Spring and small surrounding pocket park from colonial era days of old Baltimore Town on now disappeared Courtland Street just north of East Saratoga Street.

It was occupied by numerous African American black professionals and commercial offices in this downtown district and the razing and creation of the terraced gardens was to protect the nearby wealthy cultural Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood on the heights to the west and north around the historic Washington Monument from any unwanted racial encroachment.

In 1983, at the technology high school's centennial observation and celebration, a large historical bronze plaque was placed and dedicated with ceremonies of City officials, B.C.P.S.

administration / faculty / students and alumni in the St. Paul Place West lobby of the Mercy Hospital complex commemorating that earlier first home of the Manual Training School for 30 years, later to become "Poly".

Two additional massive three-story wings on the east and west sides of the center mansion were constructed and added by the City with a Greek Revival architecture with Classical style columns on the front facade.

This massive assembly hall and physical education building with swimming pool was the largest built at the time in the city and the auditorium served many secular / civic / cultural occasions and events in town for decades into the mid-1980s.

While at this location, the high school expanded both its academic, technical and athletic programs under the extensive longtime leadership of legendary Dr. Wilmer Dehuff, who was the fourth principal from 1921 to 1958.

Most Baltimore City public schools since 1870 were not integrated until after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of May 1954 in the following September / Fall semester.

But a parallel "A" Course centered on the humanities / social studies / liberal arts was also longtime since the '20s offered at arch-rival City College with a similar degree of rigorous quality.

[10] The vote vindicated the NAACP national strategy of raising the economic cost of 'separate but equal' schools beyond what taxpayers and their government bureaucracy were willing to pay.

[11] Thirteen African American students, Leonard Cephas, Carl Clark, William Clark, Milton Cornish, Clarence Daly, Victor Dates, Alvin Giles, Bucky Hawkins, Linwood Jones, Edward Savage, Everett Sherman, Robert Young, and Silas Young, finally entered the Polytechnic Institute that fall.

In September 1967, after a multi-year planning and construction project, then-fifth principal Claude Burkert (1958–1969) oversaw the relocation of his school after 54 years at North Avenue and Calvert Street to its current location at 1400 West Cold Spring Lane, a fifty-three-acre tract of land bordering the Jones Falls stream to the west (and adjacent elevated Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) and with Falls Road (Maryland Route 25} and the heights of the Roland Park residential planned community from the 1890s to the east along Cold Spring Lane, and to the south is the Hampden and Woodberry neighborhoods.

Further to the north along Falls Road is the Village of Cross Keys shopping mall and planned residential community also developed during the 1960s by the noted James Rouse.

In 1974 after some controversy and a local court case, the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute officially became coeducational when it began admitting female students for the first time in almost 90 years.

[15] In addition to the school's football program, Poly's sports include basketball, soccer, cross-country, track and field, lacrosse, baseball, hockey, swimming, tennis, volleyball, and wrestling.

[18] Since the early 1900s the "Engineers" of the Polytechnic Institute, along with longtime arch-rival The Baltimore City College's, "Collegians" / "Black Knights" had dominated the old public – private schools athletic league of the Maryland Scholastic Association (M.S.A.)

However, since joining the newer state-wide Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA – founded 1946) in 1993, Poly made it to the final playoff football game once in 1993, the semi-finals once in 1997 and the quarterfinals in 1994 and 1998.

After seven years of temporary exile in a former elementary school building they returned again to the same site at Howard and Centre to a new larger home followed in 1899, remaining there although increasingly overcrowded until the move to the "Castle" in 1928.

Plus tailgating in the surrounding old stadium parking lots and checking out the earlier activities of the morning football game between Roman Catholic high schools Calvert Hall and Loyola.

They frequently continued the fun tradition of making up a replica humorous satire of the opponent's student paper so memorable versions appeared of "The Folly Mess" (subtitled "A Folly institution since A.D. 922") reporting on the dire terrible situation at the "Baltimore Follytechnique Institution" and equally hilarious "The Collitchin" (with its twisted slogan "serving the student morons of the Baltimore Seedy Collage") of the awful horrible climate at the "Dump on the Hump" and making fun of the other's administration, faculty, coaches, collapsing decrepit buildings, worthless diplomas and failed education good only for future criminal successes!!!

With both secondary schools packed to almost 4,000 male students each because of the post-Second World War "baby boom" plus slowness in new construction and were heavily overcrowded, sometimes operating on split -shifts, but the scholastic sports programs continued to prosper, strive and inspire generations of Poly and City boys.

Young (a Calvert Hall alumnus, City College history teacher and future Baltimore Colts front office executive and later to lead the New York Giants pro football team and finish his sports career as an NFL executive), guided his "Black Knights" teams to six wins over Poly, and an equal number of the old Maryland Scholastic Association (M.S.A.)

[33] This change meant that the scholastic football season would end earlier to allow for the beginning of state-wide playoffs in the M.P.S.S.A.A., forcing Poly and City to move their annual century-old game in 1994 from its longtime traditional holiday date for decades of Thanksgiving Day holiday afternoon to the less memorable first Saturday in November, and a subsequent loss of high attendance, publicity and media coverage with occasional radio / television broadcasts.

Then Poly and City met for the 119th time in November 2007, a contest unfortunately marred by the outbreak of a large brawl outside the new M&T Bank Stadium, southwest of downtown where the annual Fall Football Classic for the oldest public and Catholic high schools had been relocated in the redeveloped Camden Yards Sports Complex (built 1996 for the new moved franchise from the Cleveland Browns to become the new Baltimore Ravens pro football team in the NFL).

Violence had occasionally occurred near a century before and marred the old City-Poly traditions during the 1920s, but happened elsewhere from the stadium on downtown streets with competing colliding school fans parades.

Four decades later, some more serious strife recurred during the socially tumultuous late 1960s era and early '70s outside old Memorial Stadium (rebuilt 1949–54) on the northside of 33rd Street with huge crowds of over 30,000 fans filling up two-thirds of the bowl.

But it had been generally peaceful ever since those times of national unrest with racial summer urban riots and anti-Vietnam War and the military draft protests.

Now Poly and City still met for the 120th time on November 8, 2008, with guarded anticipation and some added security plus an intensive discussion program at both schools the several weeks before.