Landmark schools could get new life
GHA ponders possible renovation of Emerson and Horace Mann
As concern escalates over Gary’s glut of abandoned schools, the Gary Housing Authority hopes to repurpose legendary Emerson and Horace Mann high schools, along with two nearby vacant elementaries to shore up its diminishing housing stock. The GHA Board of Directors approved an option to purchase Horace Mann and Emerson high schools and Vohr and Spaulding schools Nov. 21.
Built early in the 20th century, Emerson and Horace Mann quickly engendered pride in the city, lifting it up as an education beacon that attracted educators from across the country.
The purchases are conditional upon an environmental review, appraisals and other conditions required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. GHA executive director Julian Marsh said the GHA offered $5,000 for each school.
Marsh said engineers were evaluating the schools to determine if they can be saved.
“It you go around the country, there are lots of schools converted to different uses,” he said. Marsh
said one project left the old classroom blackboard inside apartments.
Marsh said GHA officials plan to meet with Gary Community School Corp. officials soon to begin hashing out details of the sale. “We’re trying to move it along as soon as possible,” Marsh said.
“We need to get in with engineers and see what the condition is. We want it to be something that will be an asset to community,” Marsh said.
Marsh said the neighborhood will be informed of the planning. “This is not the kind of thing you do in a vacuum. We want to keep people abreast of what’s happening.”
Dumping ground
The GHA’s proposal comes in the shadow of a grisly homicide on Nov. 21. A trio of Gary suspects is accused of killing a 27-year-old Portage woman and dumping her body in Norton Elementary, an abandoned school at 1356 Harrison Blvd.
The latest homicide involving a vacant Gary school has renewed concern on more than 30 shuttered schools that have become neighborhood eyesores.
Since 2011, four homicide victims have been dumped at abandoned Gary schools.
An exodus of residents and the emergence of charter schools drained away the Gary Community School Corp.’s enrollment, placing it in financial peril. In 2017, the district fell under state control.
While the Nov. 21 homicide happened in Portage, the dumping of Ariana Saucedo’s body inside Norton attracted attention from Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and mayor-elect Jerome Prince.
Both said they would reach out to school officials for better security on the closed buildings. The school district has boarded buildings in the past, but scrappers and vandals quickly rip the boards off to gain access.
Emergency manager Peter Morikis said the three teen suspects broke into Norton, which he said was “thoroughly secured.”
Freeman-Wilson said she’s talking with leaders in the General Assembly about solutions to the blight caused by the abandoned schools. “I think the General Assembly or DUAB (Distressed Unit Appeal Board) should appropriate a certain amount annually to tear down schools,” she said.
The city’s demolition coordinator evaluated the closed schools and set a demolition cost for each of them, she said.
Many doors are still open at closed schools, like Horace Mann where an arson fire destroyed the auditorium in 2017. Whole rows of windows are broken out at many schools, making access easy.
Freeman-Wilson said Morikis was committed to addressing the issues around the shuttered schools.
The glory days
Built in 1908, Emerson, at 716 E. 7th Ave., is the city’s oldest high school and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995. School officials couldn’t keep up with costly repairs on the aging school and it closed in 2008.
Today, what remains is a hollowed out shell. The stately brick building, designed by architect William B. Ittner, sits like a hulking ruin in a neighborhood trying to hang on from the ravages of blight on nearly every corner.
Community activist and minister Curtis Whittaker said the median income in the neighborhood is $12,000.
With a classic Tudor design, Horace Mann opened in 1928 with a pond and pedestrian bridges providing a park-like locale for students who ice skated and fished on the pond. The school included two swimming pools and two science labs, cutting edge upgrades for its time.
In 1956, its enrollment topped 2,600 students but by 2004, it dwindled to 546. It closed in 2004.
Future housing?
Freeman-Wilson likes the GHA’s idea of saving the schools and creating new housing.
“Certainly to have it in their hands as responsible members of this city team would be better than what we have now, which is nothing,” she said.
Whittaker, president of the Gary Downtown-Emerson Neighborhood Spotlight, a community building effort funded by the Legacy Foundation, wants to see the GHA engage people in the community as the project takes shape.
“If there’s vision to what the neighborhood wants to see, we believe that is the best approach,” he said. “We definitely don’t want it to stay like it is,” he said of the once-majestic school that’s lost its windows and seen its inside gutted.
Whittaker, who’s a local accountant and pastor of Progressive Community Church directly west of Emerson, thinks the project could bring new opportunity for struggling residents.
“They’ll have a developer coming on, but more likely than not, the developer won’t look like people who live in the neighborhood. It’s an opportunity for developers to train folks who live in the neighborhood,” he said.
The GHA is reaching a turning point of its own as its affordable housing stock is depleted by upcoming demolition projects in Delaney Community and Dorie Miller public housing centers and past demolitions in Delaney West, Glen Park’s Colonial Gardens and Gary Manor.
In 2010, 316 units in 103 buildings at Ivanhoe Gardens, 3200 W. 11th Ave., on the city’s west side, came down with federal stimulus money.
In 2016, a U.S. Housing and Urban Development official called the demolition projects critical to the long-term revitalization of the GHA. That year, 227 units in Delaney West came down at 21st Avenue and Pierce Street.
In recent years, federal housing rules have required new projects to shift away from high-rises to reduce high concentrations of poverty. In the 1960s, high-rises and complexes like Delaney West shot up in response to a housing crisis. Scattered-site housing such as Duneland Village in Miller, which opened in 2006, and Horace Mann apartments, which opened a year later, offers some fully subsidized units. Others are split between partially subsidized tenants and those who pay market-rate prices. Displaced residents are typically placed in another GHA unit or issued vouchers for relocation.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for all these families going to need housing,” Marsh said of the prospective schools rehab projects.