By March 1949 the campus was packed with 1,042 students and bonds were voted to build a stadium and classroom addition.
1952
A track and field were designed by Buck & Caldwell and constructed for $66,000. There is a 1953 photo of the band out on the field. In that photo you can see how the east side of the school looked before the stadium, annex, and counseling suite were built.
1954
The stadium was designed by Buck & Caldwell, constructed and equipped for $504,810, and built by the Wickersham Construction Company of Tulsa. The project started in May 1953 with $150,000 from a September 1952 bond issue, $153,665 from private donations by various companies and individuals, and the remainder from building funds. The completion date slipped from May 1954 and the three-floor 10-classroom stadium was dedicated on September 17, 1954 even though it wasn't yet fully completed.
The stadium also contained a metal shop, band room, and locker rooms running north to south on the basement level. (Before the stadium band room was built, the original field house had a stage that doubled as a band room - that area later became a concession stand. Tiny rooms on various levels around that area were once music practice rooms, then now coaches' offices and lounges, and now are mostly abandoned due to accessibility problems.)
The football field and stadium were dedicated in memory of Coach Cecil "Lefty" Custer, who came to Bartlesville in 1924 and coached junior high football and many other sports for decades. Custer had previously coached for a few years in Augusta, Kansas and had pitched for the University of Kansas baseball team for three years, and was also active in football, track, and basketball; he passed away in 1953. Prior to 1954, football games were held crosswise on the baseball field at the Bartlesville Municipal Stadium (now Bill Doenges Memorial Stadium).
The stadium classroom design proved problematic, with an inaccessible inner roof that leaked over time, especially at the expansion joints, and rooms with clerestory windows that were eventually blocked by lowered ceilings, leaving the classrooms with no natural light except via the doorway.
1956
A new basement cafeteria was designed by Caudill, Rowlett, & Scott and constructed by Lambert Construction of Stillwater for $94,583, although the adjacent area to the west remains low unexcavated space. The original cafeteria was on the second floor of the building across from the original library, and served as an auxiliary reading room. It was moved to the basement and the upper room became a study hall; that area was the library reference room for many years and is now classrooms, offices, and storage. The basement cafeteria was renovated in 2015 into the Phillips 66 Innovation Labs with $450,000 of construction and another $330,000 in furnishings and equipment by a grant for Science/Technology/Engineering/Math education.
1958
The annex was designed by Charles Woodruff and constructed by Langley Construction of Tulsa for $214,188.
This brought the confusing "3rd, 4th, and 5th floors", with the "3rd" floor below-ground! The home economics classes, which were on the first floor across from the office, moved to a customized 3rd floor. The 4th floor included a skybridge connecting the main building to the stadium. The 5th floor had a rooftop greenhouse which was used by environmental science and business classes (which grew homecoming mums) until the late 1970s. The annex originally had 11 classrooms and several hundred lockers. The skywalk was replaced by a two-story link around 2004 and the leaking and decrepit greenhouse was removed in 2012. The annex rooms were renumbered in the 2000s to match up with the rest of the campus.