Tim Clark saved a slice of Lawrence public school history.

While cleaning a storage room at the district’s maintenance shop, Clark grabbed a box of junk off a high shelf. He nearly pitched it all in the trash, until a tattered brown folder caught his eye.

To his surprise, inside the folder were handwritten school documents. In pencil across the top of a page was the note: “Old h.s.”

Further inspection revealed a date: September 1889.

“I knew it had to be for an old, old high school,” Clark said.

Bryan Hunter, the district’s maintenance supervisor, said the documents appear to be the only known surviving copy of construction specifications for a Lawrence high school built at the intersection of Kentucky and Warren (now Ninth) streets.

The papers were signed by the Lawrence school board president, Richard Cordley. An elementary school in the district, still in operation at 1837 Vt., was later named for him.

The documents also carry the name of J.G. Haskell, the state’s first official architect who also worked on the Kansas Capitol and the Douglas County Courthouse.

While cleaning a storage room, Tim Clark, right, an electrician with the school district, found handwritten documents from 1889 for the construction of a high school. Bryan Hunter, the district's maintenance supervisor, left, said they appear to be the only surviving copy of construction plans for the school.

“It’s amazing these survived,” Hunter said. “How it got on the shelf? Who knows.”

The high school building opened in 1890 after voters approved a $35,000 bond issue for construction. The vote was 950-140.

The building was used by high school students until Liberty Memorial High School opened on Massachusetts Street. Central Junior High School now occupies the building.

The old high school building tied to the documents no longer stands.

To put the recovered materials in context, the era in which they were drafted corresponds to the time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were still robbing trains and banks in the West. In 1889, four states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington — were admitted to the union. That was the year the Oklahoma land rush began.

“These documents weren’t done by computer,” Clark joked. “It’s handwritten with an ink pen. Now, they just hit a button and it prints out.”

Hunter said a school construction project these days would require a thick packet of documents outlining every detail of the job. It would be paired with dozens of blueprints.

The legal papers alone would dwarf the 1889 construction packet, which is about a quarter-inch thick.

At first, Hunter and Clark thought their find was related to a building at 901 Ky. that was used as a school and has similar construction features. But that structure, formerly known as Central School, was built in 1900.

Both men want to the old papers properly preserved, perhaps in a library facility.

“It’s pretty cool,” Hunter said.