 Henderson High School was the first school constructed to a new common design plan, which were used during the post-World War II period to speed up secondary school construction.The "Henderson type school" was a single-storey all-timber school design, with long wings of classrooms facing onto corridors, fanning out from a central spine.It was a derivative of the "Naenae type school" (after its first use at Naenae College in Lower Hutt), which with two stories and mixed concrete and timber construction was too slow for a major school building programme.