http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/arts/design/reading-writing-and-renewal-the-urban-kind.html?ref=education&_r=0
Henderson-Hopkins School in East Baltimore
Matt Roth for The New York Times
BALTIMORE — In many ways, public schools are gated communities, dead zones. They’re shuttered after dark and during the summer, open to parents and students while in session but not to the larger community.
A new public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in East Baltimore wants to challenge the blueprint. Designed by Rob Rogers, of Rogers Partners in New York, Henderson-Hopkins, as it’s called, aspires to be a campus for the whole area — with a community center, library, auditorium and gym — as well as a hub for economic renewal.
This is the neighborhood where parts of “The Wire” were filmed. In 2000, when the city’s mayor convened local business leaders, the vacancy rate was 70 percent. Poverty was twice the city average. Crime, infant mortality and unemployment were all through the roof.
The idea that emerged — of making the school the centerpiece of a major redevelopment project — is a grand urban experiment. Operated by Johns Hopkins University in collaboration with Morgan State University, the school, which opened in January, belongs to a $1.8 billion plan that also includes new science and technology buildings, a park, retail development and mixed-income housing. While gentrification might threaten to displace the poor, the school is to be the glue that helps bind the district together.
Like any kindergartner, the concept is full of promise. Can it work?
Built for 720 children, the school occupies several linked, low-rise buildings with lofty communal spaces arranged around nesting courtyards and interior streets that mimic the fabric of the neighborhood. There’s an early-childhood center for infants and toddlers and a grade school that runs through eighth grade.
“Baltimore demolished many great old school buildings in the 1950s and ’60s and replaced them with incredibly depressing places,” recalled Christopher Shea, president of East Baltimore Development Inc., the nonprofit organization overseeing the plan. “We wanted to go in the opposite direction. We wanted Henderson-Hopkins to be an inspiration and magnet for the neighborhood.”
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