In 1876 the Victoria Building was opened as the girls' high school. Unfortunately, a year later the Great Fire destroyed both this new school and the "... ancient looking wooden building on the corner of Germain and Horsfield" (St. John High). A new Victoria School for girls was opened in 1878 but the Grammar School was located in a variety of buildings until a new high school building was erected on Union Street for both boys and girls. It opened as Saint John High School in 1897. Even though the students were housed in the same building, segregation of the sexes was an entrenched idea. Few students experienced academic instruction from members of the opposite sex. A few activities however, such as the school orchestra created in Saint John High School on Union Street 1898, were co-educational. This building served the students of SJHS until the 1930s when academic demands and curricular innovations necessitated the building of a new school.