To find some of the treasures tucked away in Western High School, wander to the right of the red-black-and-white canvas portraits of alumnae near the front entrance and head through a door that seems like it leads to a small classroom.

There you’ll find a space filled with artifacts from the all-girls Baltimore school founded in 1844. With yearbooks and clothes, decades-old journals and diplomas, generations of students and staff members have contributed to the robust but unorganized trove.

That will soon change.

As Western prepares for a renovation that requires staff and students to be out of the building for two years, a foundation associated with the school is organizing and preserving unique and historically significant items. But first, the Western High School Foundation must figure out what they even have.

The foundation plans to display its history in an organized showroom after the renovations are complete for the Falls Road building that Western has been in since 1967.

“The little things are what’s important,” said Carolyn O’Keefe, vice president of the foundation and member of the class of 1974.

In one glass case, there are worn brown leather boots with shoelaces tightly tied through every opening up to the lower calf, common footwear for young women in the 1800s. Several dresses — Western students wear white when they graduate — are displayed on lopsided mannequins.

The oldest find would come after eliciting help.

The foundation partnered with the History Associates, an archiving and research company based in Rockville, to learn how old some of the items are, how to handle and store them, and how to display them once the renovation is complete.

Christine McKee, director of the archive preservation project and member of the class of 1974, always knew Western had a deep history, but she’d never seen anyone dig into the uncharted corners and shelves of the archives room.

Within the first hour of their initial rummage with the History Associates workers, they found a high school diploma from 1879, aging on a scroll of brittle brown paper and marked with a red City of Baltimore emblem.

“We had no idea we had anything that old. Every time I go in there there’s something to find,” said McKee as she sifted through a closet filled with dozens of Westward Ho! yearbooks.

Katie Jakovich, a senior archivist with History Associates, is unsure if their organization has ever worked with a school before, but she said Western’s passion for their keepsakes is contagious.

The Banner joined the foundation for an afternoon of sifting through school treasures and quickly learned that any corner of the room was a pipeline to a different period.

Whether an arithmetic book from the early 1900s with a crumbling spine or a copy of Western’s school song on an aged program, each item elicited prideful grins from McKee, O’Keefe and Monique Cox, president of the foundation and member of the class of 1993.

Principal Brittany Baugh strolled into the archives room and said there’s a lot that needs to be preserved and restored, but the collection touches on American history.

On the page of a worn journal, in tight cursive, a Western graduate reflected on the past four years of high school.

“It was not very long ago that we were like these precious freshmen — shy, cute and adoring the greater man,” the student wrote.

Her freshman year? 1920. The same year women gained the right to vote.

“We really want to get the story behind how they felt,” O’Keefe said.

The stacks of journals in the archive room are reminiscent of today’s trend of “junk journaling,” where notebooks are filled with the scraps from day-to-day life, including late-night Taco Bell runs or trips to a neighborhood coffee shop.

Western students of the past kept light blue Hopkins vs. Maryland football ticket stubs from 1925, black-and-white photos from beach days and class trips, and event menus with offerings of asparagus salad, chicken croquettes and button radishes.

The archives room isn’t necessarily a secret, especially for those who attended the Falls Road building, according to the foundation. It has long been known as a gold mine of teacher and staff photos in the countless stacks of yearbooks.

The foundation wants to find ways to get students involved with all the materials and eventually outfit “the space so the students are learning from achievements of alumnae,” Cox said as she pulled out and examined a lacrosse stick from 1931 donated by an alumna.

The foundation has also been talking to the Maryland Center for History and Culture about research and education opportunities. David Armenti, the center’s vice president of education and engagement, said they have the experience and infrastructure to show students how to properly handle and learn from original materials.

He said he was taken aback by Western’s 19th- and 20th-century items and is intrigued by materials that have a connection to the Civil Rights Movement.

Western was integrated shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in May 1954.

“The range of materials that they have, and the range of time periods and topics that it can touch on, is very, very unique when you think about it from a high school context,” Armenti said.

The foundation has a wish list for the future exhibition space. They want museum-quality lighting, drawers for viewing significant and delicate documents, and storytelling backdrops. They aim to raise at least $161,000 to offset the cost of storing valuables in a museum-quality, temperature-controlled space for the next two years.

Western will move to the Northwestern High School building on Park Heights Avenue during the renovation, which is set to begin in June. It’s the latest of Baltimore schools to have gone through multiyear renovations, including Baltimore City College and Frederick Douglass High School.

In fact, Douglass discovered a secret behind a safe door as they prepared to renovate the century-old building on Gwynns Falls Parkway.

The Western High School Foundation recently announced that it was on the hunt for school memorabilia that might be tucked away in alumnae homes, stuffed in closets or drawers.

“We’re continuing the tradition of carrying it on,” O’Keefe said.