Golda Meir School

The Golda Meir School (originally Fourth Street School) for gifted and talented students is a Milwaukee Public Schools district elementary, middle, and high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The school offers classes for students in grades three through twelve. In 1979 the school was renamed in honor of Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, who attended the institution from 1906 to 1912. There are two campuses: the lower campus and the upper campus. The 1890 lower campus building is a National Historic Landmark, designated in 1990 for its association with Meir.

Situated next to the historic Schlitz Brewing Complex of the same era, the Fourth Street School, now the Meir School lower campus, was designed in 1889 by noted Milwaukee architect Henry C. Koch in Romanesque Revival style. Hallmarks of the style are the rough stone foundation (to give it a sense of rootedness) and the round topped arches. The school was completed by 1890 and opened its doors on September 2, 1890. H shaped in plan, the school building has four stories (basement included) and contains 16 classrooms along with an auditorium. A single story heating plant was added in 1915, with a fuel room to follow in 1937. Fire escapes and enclosure of the stairways brought the building up to code in 1957. Renovation of the interior and exterior took place in 1976, during which a cafeteria was added. Four years later she graduated from Milwaukee's North Division High School and entered teachers' college, but her interest in Palestine was growing. She joined the Labor Zionist Movement in 1915, led rallies for them, and during WWI worked for Jewish relief programs and taught Yiddish in Milwaukee's Jewish Community Center. She kept Milwaukee as her home base until 1920, when she and her husband moved to New York, then emigrated to Palestine in 1921. She later wrote:</blockquote> In Palestine she worked for the labor organization Histadrut and in the 1930s she traveled back to the U. S. to lecture and raise funds for the Jews of Palestine. During WWII she worked to rescue Jews from the Nazis. In 1948, as European Jews flooded to Palestine and around the time the State of Israel was established, she returned to the U. S. to raise more funds for Israel. In following years she served as Israel's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Minister of Labor, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974.