The old Gwynns Falls Junior High School is a noble survivor. Cast off by the school system nearly 30 years ago, then purchased by a church, this West Baltimore academic landmark is now poised to see its corridors filled with about 875 students attending a progressive city charter school.
The minute I passed through its threshold, I knew this was no ordinary junior high. Its preserved oak woodwork detailing bespoke a thoroughbred pedigree. I discovered a large auditorium, where the Kingdom Life Church holds services, and unused classrooms off wide terrazzo corridors. The school's interior is light-filled; replacing hundreds of decaying windows will cost some of the $19 million being spent on the structure.
Next September, Green Street Academy Inc., a nonprofit city charter school, is scheduled to move into the school, where generations of West Baltimoreans once prepared for high school. The school purchased the North Hilton Street property last week from the church after searching for new quarters for several years.
"We are bursting at the seams," said its principal, Daniel Schochor, of the academy's present location in a former city public school in the Westgate neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore near the county line. "We prepare our students for the 21st-century economy." The school now has 439 students.
The Green Street Academy is true to its name. It's a school with a koi pond in its lobby. It also has a tilapia fish tank, a vegetable-growing greenhouse and a chicken coop. Vegetables grown at the school can turn up at Woodberry Kitchen or in dishes served by Classic Catering. The school has an active board of directors, led by founders David Warnock, Lawrence Rivitz and Edward Cozzolino. Once it moves, the school will grow and serve students from the sixth through the 12th grades.
While construction work began a few days ago, a formal groundbreaking ceremony is planned for January. There is also more money to be raised to outfit the school.
The academy will make use of the school's size, 150,000 square feet on a generous piece of land facing North Hilton Street. That large capacity was given as one of the reasons for closing the school in 1985. Its enrollment dropped by 20 percent and the building was then 60 years old.
Led by the Rev. Michael Phillips, the Kingdom Life Church will remain. The congregation plans a new worship building on the school's grounds, but by arrangement will share the school's auditorium for Sunday services.
The school was a showcase for the city at its completion in 1925. News articles in The Sun reported a debate about its $1.2 million cost. Financier Robert Garrett and wholesale merchant Jacob Epstein parried about whether terra cotta or limestone should be used on the building's Collegiate Gothic-Tudor Revival trim. Public school advocate Marie Bauernschmidt also joined the argument. She worried whether students would venture into a quarry in the neighboring Gwynns Falls Valley.
The city selected architects William Levering Smith and Howard May, who a few years later would design Baltimore's great 1920s skyscraper, the Baltimore Trust Co., at 10 Light St. That building, like the Gwynns Falls School, is also undergoing a thorough renovation. Smith and May's other commercial gem, the main Read's Drug Store at Howard and Lexington, remains the subject of a preservation debate.
The school is actually a mini-campus and has a separate boiler house with a tall brick chimney. This ancillary structure also houses the school's shop and woodwork department. Unused for 30 years, it is in a state of near collapse because of a failed roof.
I toured the building with Jon Constable, a partner with Seawall Development, the firm hired by Green Street to oversee the Gwynns Falls work.
"The school is so true to its green mission," Constable said. "But the ultimate recycling act is this building itself. We are keeping the main structure pretty much as it was intended, a big school."