After North Dakota achieved statehood in 1889, Mandan's population grew rapidly. The West End school on Eighth Avenue and the two-story wooden East End school on Wright Avenue—now Collins Avenue—soon reached capacity.
In 1899, the Mandan Board of Education, led by C. E. Draper and members T. A. Cummins, J. H. McGillic, H. H. Harmon, and H. D. Stevenson, asked voters to approve a $15,000 (about $581,000 in 2025 dollars) Central School. The building would house junior and senior high school students and provide a larger grade school for western Mandan. Voters approved the bond issue.
The three-story Italianate brick school had a central tower and cupola. Italianate buildings were generally plain and boxlike, with two or three stories, low-pitched hipped roofs, broad overhanging eaves supported by decorative brackets or corbels, and tall, narrow windows with arched or curved tops. Central School's tower had an unusual octagonal bell roof.
Italianate architecture became popular in Europe during the 1830s and reached the United States later in the 19th century. Derived from 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture and sometimes called “semi-rustic,” it suited a formal public building on the Dakota frontier. The Dakota Territorial Capitol, built seven years earlier in Bismarck, used the same style. Both buildings were constructed with red pressed brick from the large brickworks at Sims, 45 miles west by rail.
The School District owned an entire city block immediately south of the natural ridge marking the city's northern edge. Additional buildings were added over time. A new high school opened on the western edge of the block in 1911, followed by a gymnasium in 1919.
Alumni purchased a 1,380-pound solid-bronze bell from the American Bell Foundry Company of Northfield, Michigan. It was installed in Central School's cupola in 1914.
The bell remained there until 1966, when Central School was demolished after completion of a new senior high school. It was moved to a plinth at the south entrance of the former high school, which then served as the district's junior high school.
When the complex was sold to private investors in 2016, the bell was removed and returned to the School District.
The bell, the original school's cornerstone, and the plaque from the former plinth are now displayed inside Mandan Middle School at 2019 12th Avenue Northwest.
