The very intact Nicolet High School was built on the west side of the City of De Pere in 1923 as a modern, up-to-date replacement for the west side’s earlier high school building. It is now the west side’s only surviving pre-World War II public school building. The west side’s new $140,000.00, three-story-tall, brick-clad school building was designed in the Neo-Classical Revival style by the prominent Green Bay, Wisconsin architectural firm of Foeller, Schober, and Stephenson. This firm had previously designed a new elementary school for the west side of De Pere in 1901, as well as many other schools located in nearby Green Bay and in other communities located throughout northeast Wisconsin.

Once completed, the school continued to be used for its original purpose until 1958, by which time the needs of De Pere’s rapidly increasing west side student population could no longer be met by its existing building. Consequently, Nicolet High School was sold to the Norbertine Order of the Roman Catholic Church, whose St. Norbert College campus in De Pere was located just one block to the south of the high school. A newer, much larger west side public high school was then built to replace it. The timing of this sale was excellent because by 1958, the private Catholic high school for boys that the Norbertine Fathers had conducted in one of the St. Norbert College‘s buildings for more than thirty years was also in dire need of larger quarters. As a result, the former Nicolet High School was slightly remodeled and then reopened as Abbot Pennings High School in 1959. Abbot Pennings High School continued in operation as a high school until June of 1990, at which time it was merged with other schools in the Green Bay diocese. Subsequently, the former high school building was purchased by St. Norbert College, which renamed it as the Pennings Activity Center and which still uses the building today to house both classrooms and various administrative offices.