The Key Peninsula Civic Center Turns 70

In 1956, with a deed dated July 18, Pierce County School District No. 401 conveyed its Union High School facility in Vaughn to the newly formed Key Peninsula Civic Center Association. The district and a committee representing the association had reached an agreement on the terms of the sale in late March.

It was the final chapter in a process set in motion in 1947, when the new Peninsula High School opened in Purdy, consolidating the district’s Gig Harbor High School and Union High School in Vaughn. The large, modern school would relieve classroom overcrowding for the more than 250 students from the two peninsulas. According to a reporter for The Tacoma Sunday Ledger-News Tribune, the school also “promised to become the apex of social and cultural activity in the area.”

Once the high school moved to Purdy, the Vaughn facility was repurposed as a grade and intermediate school. That included the original two-room high school built in 1905, and the larger building, a Roosevelt-era WPA project begun in 1936 and completed in time for the 1937-1938 school year. That structure featured a gym, a stage, two classrooms, boys’ and girls’ dressing rooms, and a kitchen.

Seventeen years later, in February 1955, after the passage of a school bond levy providing for the construction of the new Vaughn and Evergreen elementary schools, the district decided to dispose of unused properties, including the old Vaughn high school. The property was listed in August for $9,325, about $116,000 today.

As soon as the school board announced its decision, the community sprang into action. With its ample interior spaces, extensive amenities, and plenty of room for parking, the complex was an ideal venue for community activities and could also house community organizations.

In the months between September 1955 and March 1956, what became the Key Peninsula Civic Center Association slowly came together. A fund drive was held to raise the money needed to buy the property, since the school board required a cash purchase. Over 100 individuals and businesses contributed, and by late March, the community and the school board agreed on a sale price of $7,380.

The association was incorporated April 10, 1956. On April 18, it signed the purchase and sale agreement with the school board, and the building was officially named the Key Peninsula Civic Center.

A dedication dinner-dance was held in the refurbished gym June 30. Dulcie Schillinger, the association’s secretary-treasurer, sent out invitations to hundreds of dignitaries and guests. As she wrote later in a short history of the civic center, “700 people gathered and celebrated the unique efforts begun by a handful of interested citizens at a meeting held in September 1955.”

Supported by countless volunteers and organizations over the decades, the civic center continues to give back to the community. As the reporter from 1947 might have put it, it has become the apex of social and cultural activity on the Key Peninsula.