Flower Technical School for Girls
Chicago, Cook County
Lucy Flower Technical High School for Girls, constructed in 1927, was the only all-girl public school and the only female vocational school in Chicago’s history. “Flower Tech,” also significant for its Gothic Revival architecture, was run by a female superintendent, principal, and all-female faculty. The school’s curriculum combined home economics with technical training for the female workforce, whether working at home or in the factory. As Chicago’s only open-enrollment high school for girls, Flower Tech furthered career and college ambitions and provided many students one of their only racially-integrated experiences in an otherwise segregated city. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the school’s enrollment declined and the curriculum was altered. The school went co-educational in 1978 and closed in 2004.
