(The following article, written by Wilfrid Taylor was originally published in "The Scotsman" in 1985 under the title of "Higher Girders")

When...I met Mrs C J Tudhope, who has long associations with learning in Dundee and St Andrews,...she asked me if I was concerning myself with the centenary of the Harris Academy, now a much esteemed higher girder in the west end of the city.  To my shame I had not been aware that the school was celebrating a hundred years of enlightened existence.

I say “shame” since I had started on my own schooling in the Harris under the gentle guidance of one of my favourite teachers Miss Duff.  Wearing a green jersey and a Glengarry bonnet, I had taken my first steps towards formal learning clutching a satchel containing a pencil, an India rubber, and a banana.  I decided to squeeze in a hit-and-run visit to my first school before crossing the river.

The Harris in which I met the gentle Miss Duff, and other warm hearted ladies who held my hand as I strode up the nursery slopes of learning, like Miss Morrison and Miss Phin, before switching to the High School at the age of 11, was located quite a long way from the splendid “new” Harris with its sweeping view up to the Tay estuary.  It was sited, in fact, just a few yards from the hall in which I delivered that talk on the Press, at the Nethergate end of Park Place.  Now, I think, the new Bonar building stands there, but I believe a tree, on which I often dreamily gazed, is still preserved.  I trust so.

The Rector of Harris in my day was a god-like figure, Mr J Barry Robb.  He was a credit to Savile Row.  Invariably he wore striped trousers and a cutaway morning coat, sartorially the polar opposite of my next Rector, at the High School, who affected grey, rather unpressed suits, a bowler-hat and a wing-collar.  Every morning Mr Robb crossed the bridge of the higher girders by train from his home in Wormit, was decanted at the Ulysses S Grant Esplanade Station, and with Homburg hat, dark overcoat and rolled umbrella, led the commuters, at a brisk and martial pace, down a kind of fairway leading to the east.  There was an unaffected hubris in his stride.

I was able to spend a few minutes in the school which is planning a celebration dinner as the culmination of its centennial celebrations.  From a kindly lady administrator I was able to buy a maroon coloured paperback, Harris Academy – The First Hundred Years, the author of which, Dr G D Brindle, is a historian on the staff of the school.

The name of the school is eponymous, going back to Bailie Harris, a self-made rich and far-seeing Dundonian.  There seems to have been a fair amount of wheeler-dealing in the early days in which the High School was also involved.

There is no need for a fulsome touch since the Harris has had, under its five Rectors, an honourable and a distinguished record, with a rich store of academic, sporting and social achievements.  Its motto is Spe et Labore which provided one of its Rectors, Mr A E Hope, with an opportunity which he did not dismiss in his, so to speak, inaugural.

I was glad to see quite a number of names familiar to me.  Miss Duff’s is there are so is that of Dave Carrie, a friend from travelling days to St Andrews, popular head of the English Department, who died far too young.  Also included in the book is that notable higher girder, Sir Garnet Wilson, whose handsome home, in which he entertained me once or twice, was quite near the Harris.

My eye lit on a paragraph referring to a small room used for intelligence testing.  This reminded me of a Harris boy called, I think, Archie Henderson, who scored a staggering IQ in the days when Godfrey Thompson was an educational pundit.  I can remember him vaguely.  He must have been about 12 years old when he was presented in the Press as a Wunderkind.  I made various attempts to trace him, through the University’s Department of Education, the Training College, etc, with no success.

Then I met an attractive young lady who was his daughter, employed as a teacher in the Harris.  She told me that her father was a manager in the Dundee jute mill and lived in Broughty Ferry.  I chapped on his door but was told that he was on holiday.  Feeling that he might not be too happy about having his youthful moment of glory recalled I did not pursue my quest.  I believe that he is dead now.

The Perth Road Harris was opened on April 21 by Sir James Irvine, Principal of St Andrews University, whose close friendship, since student days, with Dr Leighton, Rector of another great Dundee school, the Morgan Academy, was well known.  The Morgan was founded somewhat later than the Harris to further accommodate my native city’s thirst for learning.

As a pious alumnus may I wish the Harris Academy and its Rector, Mr James Hamilton, OBE, a very happy hundredth birthday, and may its girders grow ever higher.

(The complete version of "Harris Academy - the first 100 years" is available online in the School Information site.)