County and Anne Arundel County were considered upon payment of tuition to the Baltimore City Public Schools system Those enrolled were offered two academic tracks, a classical literature track and an English literature track. The sole instructor for both tracks was the educator and poet, Nathan C. Brooks, who also served as principal. To accommodate the two tracks, Brooks split the school day into two sections: one in the morning from 9 am to 12 am, and another in the afternoon from 2 pm to 5 pm. During the morning session, students studied either classics or English; however, the afternoon was devoted to English. In its first three years, the school was housed in many locations before returning to the original townhouse building on Courtland Street. In 1843, the City Council allocated $23,000 to acquire a building for the school at the northeastern corner of East Fayette and Holliday Streets, (across the street from the later Baltimore City Hall, constructed 1867–1875), and the site of the present War Memorial Plaza, constructed 1917–1925). The renovated new school building was the former old "Assembly Rooms", a Greek Revival architecture civic landmark, built in 1797 by architects Robert Cary Long, Sr. and Col. Nicholas Rogers (ancestor owner of the estate which became Druid Hill Park) to accommodate social events for Baltimore's social elite at the Baltimore Dancing Assembly, which had begun in the 1780s. and the site of the first private library company of Baltimore. The school was next door to the famous Holliday Street Theatre, where the poem "The Defence of Fort McHenry", now known as the "Star Spangled Banner" written by Frederick and Georgetown lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, (1779-1843), was first performed on its stage in October and November 1814, following the Battle of Baltimore, with the British Royal Navy and Army attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812, (now known as "Defenders' Day") on September 12-13-14, 1814. Although it was not designed to house an academic institution, the school would occupy this building for 30 years. The male high school for Baltimore went through the first of a series of name changes in 1844. First known and founded in 1839 as "The High School", it was renamed the "Male High School" because of the establishment of two schools for females — Eastern and Western High Schools, which opened in November of that year. In 1849, after