St. Charles High dates back to the 1920s, giving it a long and interesting history to explore. This history is best shown through our yearbooks. Despite the fact that many of these books are old and, likely fragile, students still have a way to look through these fascinating glimpses into the history of St. Charles High.

The Legacy Wall, located in the commons near the main office, is easy to overlook. Like many of the screens around our building, it doesn’t seem to be anything particularly eye-catching, showing a simple message, “Welcome to St. Charles High School”. On the surface, that’s all it appears to do.

In reality, the Legacy Wall does much more than just welcome guests — it contains scans of our yearbooks going back to as far as 1921, a digital hall of fame, playbills going back to 2011, class composites from 2019 onward, and a lesson on the history of the St. Charles School District. 

The project was spearheaded by Activities Director Ben Owens and Activities Administrative Assistant Andrea Irizarry. 

According to Owens, the board was purchased from a company called VitalSigns, which has been selling similar products to schools all over the country since 2017.

“We did get a gift, moneywise, from the alumni association, so, I thought that would be a good avenue to use that money on,” said Owens.

While Owens made the purchase, Irizarry was responsible for the layout and content itself. Most notably, the yearbooks housed on the wall. 

“We packed all the yearbooks up at the end of last school year, and shipped them all to New York, where they scanned all the yearbooks for us, and then sent me the files,” said Irizarry. 

With the help of senior Hope Day, Irizarry made necessary adjustments and created hyperlinks to different sections of the yearbooks for easier navigation. 

The Legacy Wall’s content can also be accessed virtually, through the SCHS Activities website.