Vacant School Building in Bristol CT Closed in 2012

Clara T. O'Connell School, Bristol Connecticut

Date added: November 04, 2024

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School

Facade (south elevation) and east (side) elevations (2015)

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The Park Street School/Clara T. O'Connell Elementary School was built in 1914, with several additions, the last completed in 1960. Located at 122 Park Street, the O'Connell School marks the point of transition in Bristol's history when industrial growth resulted in rapid population increases and the need to replace wood-frame district schoolhouses with well-lit, well-ventilated, sanitation-equipped, fire-proof buildings.

At the time of its construction in 1914, the Park Street School was extolled as one of Bristol's best examples of a modern educational building. Thanks to the tenets of the Progressive Movement, which spanned a period from roughly 1890 to 1930, the nation's public schools were increasingly idealized as an egalitarian institution in which all children might develop both their minds and bodies in a safe and sanitary environment. One result of Progressive Era educational reform was the replacement of loosely organized district schools with structured graded schools. This took place throughout Connecticut's municipalities during the early decades of the twentieth century, and the O'Connell School, originally known as the Park Street School, was widely touted as one of the best-equipped schools in Bristol at the time of its completion in 1914. As a largely immigrant workforce filled the ever-expanding number of factory positions available in Bristol, the town's South Side neighborhood developed rapidly as real estate development firms, such as the Bristol Realty Company, provided housing for workers in this neighborhood adjacent to downtown Bristol and the factory district. Originally constructed as a branch school for the South End's District No. 3, the Park Street School became a neighborhood hub in its own right as the local population increased.

The school was designed by regionally-known architect Walter Percival Crabtree (1873-1962), and locally prominent architect Harold A. Hayden (1892-1985). In continual use until 2012, the O'Connell School is a fine example of a public educational facility typical of those found throughout Connecticut, and the United States, at the time of its construction and subsequent expansion. Designed by notable local architect Walter Percival Crabtree in 1914, the building is characterized by Neoclassical styling with Collegiate Gothic influences. While the architects responsible for the 1920 and 1927 additions to the O'Connell School are not known, they may have been designed by either Crabtree himself, or by Harold A. Hayden, who was also active in Bristol at the time and who completed several other commissions for the City's School Committee, including that for the 1960 auditorium addition to the O'Connell School. Hayden was also responsible for the design of Bristol's Endee Manor housing development (1916-1917), as well as several significant residential buildings in Hartford County, Connecticut, including Copper Ledges in Bristol (1924). In his design for the auditorium, Hayden respected Crabtree's Neoclassical vision, but simultaneously provided a decidedly contemporary and stylized take on the original building.

As Bristol's manufacturing sector continued to expand during the early twentieth century, a scarcity of housing increasingly created an unstable workforce as employees took jobs in the city but often left shortly thereafter due to the poor living conditions or prohibitively expensive rents. The reaction from many of Bristol's factory owners was to create housing themselves. Many new houses were erected in the western sections of the South Side neighborhood by local builder and developer George J. LaCourse (1880-1941), who was responsible for the construction of over 250 single- and multi-family houses in Bristol during the 1910s and 1920s. Twelve of these houses were built on George Street for the Bristol Realty Company (1907-1922), which was formed by a group of leading industrialists to provide affordable housing for their workers. The occupants of these homes were first- and second- generation immigrants drawn to work in Bristol's factories. Inevitably, their children added significantly to the district's school enrollment rates.

In reporting on a meeting of Bristol's South Side School District Committee held on January 11^th, 1908, the Hartford Courant noted that the number of children in this district was rapidly expanding. Superintendent Charles L. Wooding stressed that a second school would soon be needed in the district in order to manage the increasing enrollment. Wooding reported that all of the rooms in the South Side School on School Street were full and some "overfull". In his report to the Committee, Wooding argued that, "a schoolhouse for the primary grades be erected in some thickly settled portion of the district, west of West Street." Specifically, his inclination was that the north side of Park Street would be the ideal location for a new school.

In 1912, voters in the district effectively faced the fact that they could not serve all of the children at the South Side School due to its increasing attendance rates. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter and they decided to elect a building committee that might oversee the construction of a new school. The committee consisted of the following members: Chairman William A. Hayes, Emil H. Funek, W. J. Kellegher, Algernon H. Wilcox, Martin Heutfleve, David Kelly, and Charles Stock. Several articles in local newspapers published at the time indicated that the need for additional space was rapidly becoming an emergency. The projected enrollment numbers in the South Side School District for the fall semester of 1913 required 18 classrooms, yet the district had only 16. In July of that year, the district voted to build a six-room schoolhouse on a site on the north side of Park Street, east of Tulip Street, the very same site originally chosen by Superintendent Wooding in 1908. Voters in the district also approved the appropriation of $35,000 from the town's school fund for the building committee to construct the building, which began shortly thereafter.

By July of 1914, work on the new building was complete and a report of the Board of Education noted that, "The Park Street School is a very modern six-room building." In August of the same year, an article in the Bristol Press referred to the school, which could accommodate 225 pupils, as one of the "best in the state." The architect's design and the quality of workmanship undertaken by the Torrington Building Company were also both lauded. The Park Street School was celebrated in the Hartford Courant in an extensive article published on September 6^th, 1914. A photograph of the building ran alongside a broad description of all of the modern amenities and a photograph of School District Chairman, William Hayes. Not only was the building a point of significant pride for the district and the City of Bristol, but it was built to a very high standard and within the appropriation budget. Hayes oversaw every aspect of the project and reportedly worked "'so economically" that the work was completed for $32,000. According to the Courant, Bristol's District No. 3 claimed to "have one of the finest equipped schools in the entire country."

Health and safety concerns were of paramount importance to the committee members, as was the idea of creating a comfortable learning environment for students. The school was set back from the street "so as to allow room for children to play."

Lighting was considered "of great importance with windows dominating each space … and providing the most possible amount of light for the students." Desks were obtained from the Haywood Brothers and the Wakefield Company of Gardiner, Massachusetts (later the Haywood-Wakefield Company best known for their mid-twentieth-century modern furniture) and were chosen by the building committee due to the fact that they opened from the top. This was considered "more sanitary" and the committee felt that it would help the students maintain orderliness "in some small way." Stairways were described as "large and fireproof" and a fire gong was placed in the vestibule entrance in order to notify occupants should an emergency arise. It was reported that fire drills were to be practiced regularly and telephone connections were placed in every room, linking the Principal to the teachers. Additionally, each coat room had umbrella racks under which drains were placed to "make the rooms more sanitary," and the Principal's office contained an "emergency outfit to meet small accidents."

When it opened, the Park Street School was considered a branch of the South Side School, and thus fell under the supervision of that school's principal, Harry K. Viner. The practical principal on-site, however, was a Miss Hazel Crumb of Forrestville. Miss Crumb oversaw a school that was inadequately sized to accommodate the growth of District No. 3's school-age population immediately following its dedication. By 1915, a Kindergarten had to be added in what was the building's sixth and last-completed classroom. This was done to relieve pressure from the overcrowded South Side School, which was described in School District Committee meeting minutes as "cramped."

In 1915, the South Side recorded the largest registration of students in any of the City's districts, with 1,000 students anticipated. Bristol's rapid growth during World War I is well illustrated by the ever-increasing school registration rates. The Courant noted that in January of 1915, "Since opening of winter term … [there are] twenty four new pupils on the South Side." The article also noted that this growth was largely a result of the development of several tracts of land for housing in the district.

As a result, in April of 1915, the residents of District No, 3 voted to make an appropriation for the construction of a ten-room addition to the Park School. It was obvious that the South Side was facing another crisis since it was noted that, "work will begin as soon as plans can be drawn."

However, no monies were appropriated to pay for this addition and it would be four more years before any changes were made to the Park Street School. Finally, in April of 1919, the Hartford Courant reported that District No. 3 School Committee was moving forward with an addition to the Park Street School. The proposal would double the school's capacity through the addition of six new classrooms. The plan called for squaring off the L-shaped footprint of the original building, and then adding four more rooms on its northern elevation. The article, highlighting the project, specifically identified one of the primary drivers of the district's population growth as the construction of new residences by the Bristol Realty Company. While similar problems were being faced by all of the city's school districts, in December of 1920, District No. 3 received a bond not to exceed $150,000 in order to complete the aforementioned project.

Bristol's manufacturing base and the corresponding population in South Side's "West End" continued to grow following World War I. Bristol's citizens numbered 13,502 in 1910, yet boomed to 20,620 in 1920, and 28,451 in 1930. Those experiencing the most significant growth were found on the north and south sides of the city, where developers following the lead of LaCourse continued to build single and multi-family homes. By the 1920s, the western sections of the South Side had begun to establish its own identity as the West End. In 1922, Miss Clara T. O'Connell, a graduate of the New Britain Normal School (later the Connecticut State Teachers College and Central Connecticut State University) and a former teacher at the South Street School, was elected Principal of the Park Street School. During O'Connell's tenure, the need for additional space at the Park Street School remained constant. Finally, in March of 1927, the School District Committee, after considerable discussion, voted at a special meeting to proceed with the erection of "four additional rooms at the Park Street School and equip the same at a price not to exceed $40,000." It was noted that the bids should be accepted only by local contractors. The four new classrooms were completed that same year.

Similar developments had been experienced elsewhere in the South End, as well as other parts of Bristol, during this period. By the early 1930s, the city's North and South Side districts had built several new modern schoolhouses in addition to the O'Connell School. Although the O'Connell School was the first of Bristol's school buildings to illustrate the influences of Progressive Era theories on school design, a year later District No. 1 erected a substantial addition to its Federal Hill School (later dedicated as the Thomas H. Patterson School), and then a year after that District No. 2 built its own new eight-room building on North Street (later dedicated as the Clarence A. Bingham School). In 1920, District No. 1 added a second school on Burlington Avenue, dedicated in honor of local educator John J. Jennings. In 1921, the East Side's Fifth School District erected a modern addition to its school on Pine Street (later dedicated as the Mary A. Callen School), and then in 1925 District No. 4 erected a new facility on Church Street just southwest of its existing building on School Street.

Perhaps the most prominent of Bristol's schools built during the Progressive Era, however, was its new high school, designed by architect George Wilson Potter and completed in September 1922. The need for larger high school accommodations in Bristol was made clear following the end of World War I, however, it was not until 1919, when Albert F. Rockwell, a wealthy industrialist and founder of the New Departure Company, came forward with a proposal to donate twelve acres of land for the site of the school and financing half of its construction was any traction gained. Rockwell's desire was to build a sprawling park and boulevard running along the south bank of the Pequabuck River and he felt a grand high school would make the perfect anchor to his vision. Rockwell's condition was that the City acquire a 100-foot swath of land between Main Street and the proposed high school site in order to complete the Boulevard. Although support for his plan was not unanimous - notable opposition came from John Nolan, a city planner from Cambridge, Massachusetts, hired to complete a comprehensive study of the city in 1920 - a local referendum approved the project in a vote of 5,527 to 362. Upon its opening for the 1922-1923 school year, enrollment at the high school was 560. The $932,000 building served as a bustling community hub, with the gymnasium, swimming pool, and auditorium in its northern wing remaining open to the public outside of school hours.

The 1927 addition to the Park Street School appears to have been sufficient to serve the needs of the district's West End for the following two decades. Residential construction in the area slowed during this period and the density of the neighborhood's population began to level off. In 1945, Principal O'Connell retired. In honor of her service to the district, the Park Street School was rededicated as the "Clara T. O'Connell School" at a service held on November 10^th, 1954. The decision was a fitting tribute to a teacher and administrator who had worked for over three decades in the South Side district. A few months later, in February of 1955, O'Connell died at the age of 71.

In 1957, after three decades without any significant updates to the O'Connell School having been completed, Bristol's Board of Education began to contemplate constructing a new gymnasium addition. Two years later, the School Board's Building Committee hired Bristol architect Harold Hayden to prepare plans for a combined gymnasium/auditorium/cafeteria, and a $385,000 bond was issued to pay for the improvements. The total included $42,250 to pay for the acquisition of three neighboring properties to the west of the school, which would be needed to complete the work. The Hartford Courant noted in April of 1959 that construction had begun. This was completed in 1960, and a formal "open house" took place in January of 1961.

The O'Connell School continued to serve the local community as an educational facility throughout the remainder of the twentieth century; however, following the conclusion of World War II, Bristol's manufacturing sector began a slow but steady decline. The increasing prevalence of the automobile and rise of suburban development drew many families to the suburbs at the expense of Bristol's densely settled north end neighborhoods. This resulted in a significant change in where new schools were built and how they were operated. Buses allowed for greater centralization and the cost of maintaining a large number of "neighborhood" elementary schools became a budgetary challenge. Large, centralized schools were built on undeveloped parcels in the outer reaches of town throughout the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, the majority of the city's larger factories had closed, striking a fatal blow for many of the neighborhood schools in the central city. Following the addition of the gymnasium, the only significant improvements to the O'Connell School took place in 1981. This renovation included the installation of fire doors, the reconstruction of some of the basements spaces, and the installation of lockers in some of the corridors. This kept the building in operation for another twenty years; however, after extensive public debate the school was closed and replaced by the new South Side Elementary School at 21 Tuttle Road in 2012.

Walter Percival Crabtree, Sr. (1873-1962)

Walter Percival Crabtree designed the original portion of the Park Street School in 1914. Crabtree was a prominent architect of institutional and residential buildings throughout Hartford County. Born in Rochester, New York, Crabtree began his career in Holyoke, Massachusetts during the 1890s, and from 1901 to 1904 he was employed in the New Britain office of William H. Cadwell. In 1905, Crabtree opened his own office at 272 Main Street in New Britain, where he practiced independently until he briefly partnered with his son, Walter P. Crabtree, Jr., during the late 1920s. In 1930, the elder Crabtree left the partnership to establish an independent office in Hartford, where he worked until 1951.

Although the Park Street School was undertaken fairly early in his career, Crabtree was already well known in Bristol by the time he was chosen for this commission. Two of his highest profile designs were for the Beaux-Arts-style Bristol Trust Company building at 150 Main Street (1907), and the Neoclassical style Ernest R. Burwell House, located on Grove Street (1918). His commercial and institutional commissions were most often completed in the Neoclassical style in and around Hartford County; a few notable examples being the Plainville First National Bank (1910), the New Britain's Elks' Club (1911), and the Suffield Savings Bank (1918). Crabtree's work was well represented in numerous contemporary trade publications, including American Architect and The Western Architect. His design for the New Britain Prevocational School (1915) was featured as an exceptional example of modern school construction in the American School Board Journal.

Harold. A. Hayden (1892-1985)

Harold A. Hayden was a Bristol native well-known for a number of local commissions by the time he designed the addition to the O'Connell School in 1960. A graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, Hayden went on to build a prominent and successful practice in Bristol during the 1910s. One of his earliest commissions was to design the Endee Manor development for the New Departure Manufacturing Company in 1916. He left soon thereafter to join the military, where Hayden served as a sergeant stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

Hayden maintained his Bristol office for over fifty years, during which time he designed a variety of commercial, residential, and academic buildings throughout Hartford County. In Bristol, he was most notably the architect of Copper Ledges on Federal Hill in Bristol (1924), a stunning Colonial Revival-style building, and the City's World War I memorial, erected at the intersection of Memorial Boulevard and Mellen Street in 1922. Among his many other local commissions were a large addition to the Clarence A Bingham School in Bristol, completed in 1936, a second housing development, known as Cambridge Park, built in 1942, a large addition to the Mary A. Callen School completed in 1951, and an addition to the Greene-Hills School erected in 1955.

Building Description

The Clara T. O'Connell Elementary School stands on a 3.8-acre parcel located on the north side of Park Street (CT Route 72) in the West End neighborhood of Bristol, Connecticut. The property is approximately one-quarter-mile east of Rockwell Park and one-half-mile west of Bristol's downtown commercial district. The building is set back approximately 65 feet from Park Street with a lawn at the front of the property and mature trees lining the street on the east and west sides of the school. There is a large parking lot on the east side of the school which extends to the rear (north). The north border of the property is formed by the Pequabuck River, which flows in a roughly west-east direction. The surrounding neighborhood is primarily comprised of a mix of residential and commercial structures, the majority of which are two- or three-family homes built between 1880 and 1930 in modest interpretations of the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles.

The school complex consists of an original 1914 building, additions dating from 1920 and 1927, and a gymnasium/auditorium addition completed in 1960. Constructed in 1914, and substantially enlarged in 1920 and 1927, the main block of the O'Connell School is two-stories in height and is connected to a separate auditorium-gymnasium (constructed in 1960) by a partially elevated passageway on its west elevation. The building is of load-bearing, red-brick masonry construction and was designed in the Neoclasssical style with Collegiate Gothic elements by architect Walter P. Crabtree. The original block consists of a symmetrical three-ranked facade with a central entry set within a segmental arched opening. The rear additions to the building are in keeping with the original and have simplified versions of similar decorative finishes. Fenestration throughout the original school and the additions from the 1920s consists of 1/1 double-hung replacement sash set within rectangular openings, while the auditorium retains its original mix of metal sash with hopper-style openings and fixed multi-pane windows. The entire building has a flat roof covered in a built-up asphalt system. The school was in continuous use for nearly a century; however, it was decommissioned and students were sent to the new South Side Elementary School at 21 Tuttle Road upon its completion in 2012. Despite over ninety years of use, the overall plan of the building remains unchanged and many original features of both the original building and the historic additions remain intact. These include most of the floors, walls, pressed metal ceilings, door surrounds, trim, built-in bookcases, and blackboards. The 1960 auditorium also retains character-defining elements that firmly link it to the period in which it was constructed.

The facade (south elevation) of the original building (1914) is composed of a rectangular red-brick block three bays wide and a single bay deep. The entire school rests on a brick and stone foundation set one-half story above grade. A cast-stone water table extends around the 1914 original block. The walls are set in a simple running bond pattern and rise to a decorative brick belt course spanning the building at the lintel height of the second-story windows. Above this is a corbelled brick cornice topped by a row of bricks laid in soldier course, which in turn is topped by a stepped brick parapet wrapping around all elevations of the building. Triangular brick panels are located below the peaked sections of the parapet on the south, east, and west elevations, and concrete coping caps the entire roofline.

The building's primary entrance is centered on the facade and is accessed from a set of cast concrete steps lined by low cheek walls. The segmental-arched opening has a quoined, cast-stone door surround and an infilled transom pierced by four small lights. Below the lights are aluminum letters that read "CLARA T. O; CONNELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL". The original entry doors have been replaced with a pair of modern metal units, each with a single, narrow light. Above the door surround there is a cast-stone plaque, the bottom of which follows the curve of the arched entry below. The plaque reads, in Tudor script, "PARK STREET SCHOOL".

The entrance is flanked by a pair of narrow windows with cast-stone sills and hooded molding. On the second story, above the entrance, there is a pair of windows set within a single opening framed with cast-stone. They are flanked on each side by a single, narrow window. The three openings have narrow, cast-stone sills and are joined by a continuous, stepped, cast-stone lintel. The outer bays of the facade have symmetrically spaced tripartite windows at the basement level and the first and second stories. The water table forms a heavy lintel above the basement windows, while the upper-story windows have their own wide, cast-stone lintels. Fenestration throughout the building consists of one-over-one double-hung aluminum sash set within rectangular openings.

The east elevation of the O'Connell School is comprised of three chronological divisions. The two southernmost blocks are original (1914) and include a pedimented section at the south end of the building, and the eastern half of the block to the north, which contains a side entry and a bay of tripartite windows. The original school had an L-shaped footprint. The first addition, erected in 1920, filled in the western corner of the rear block and continued north for three bays, terminating just before the northernmost side entry door. The final addition, constructed in 1927, includes the aforementioned entrance and the last block on the north end of the building.

The architectural details of the east elevation are unified throughout the three periods of construction and the nine total bays. On the south end, the decorative elements of the facade, including cast-stone watertable, recessed two-story window bay with tripartite windows and cast-stone lintels, corbelled brick cornice, decorative panels created by wide mortar joints, and pedimented parapet, are all continued from the facade across the southernmost block. The next two bays, both erected in 1914, are somewhat less detailed. They lack the cast-stone watertable, lintels, and corbelled cornice found in the southern block; and they have tile, rather than concrete, coping lining the parapet. A ground-level entry with a bracketed and hip-roofed hood is located in the middle of the three bays on the east side of the 1914 building. This has a pair of metal doors with one narrow light each, and a large single-light transom above.

The 1920 addition has three bays on its east elevation. These consist of a wide bay flanking either side of a projecting stair pavilion. Each of the window bays has five windows set in a single opening on each floor. For an unknown reason, brick headers and limestone sills are used on the southern bay, while limestone lintels and sills are found on the northern portion of this addition. A small brick block with an entrance to the basement is also located at the south end of the 1920 addition.

A third stairwell containing six windows within a single opening on each floor were added as part of a 1927 expansion project. The stairwell bay was built flush with the northernmost section of the 1920 addition, while the east elevation of the next block to the north is recessed slightly from this plane. Changes in the brickwork indicate where the 1927 addition joined the earlier building. Despite having been constructed over the course of over a decade, the school's eastern elevation is stylistically unified. The entire elevation is characterized by the use of recessed spandrel panels between the windows on the first and second floors, and by the continuous cornice composed of a slightly projecting soldier course of red brick. Above each stairwell entrance, there are the same transoms, splayed brick lintels, and hip-roof porticos supported by curved, paneled brackets.

The north (rear elevation) of the school consists of three bays. The central bay is framed by a pair of concrete-capped buttresses at its basement level and it has small window openings on each floor. The two flanking bays each have three basement-level windows with blind walls above. The only decorative elements visible on this elevation are two raised brick panels that comprise the majority of the blind walls, a run of soldier-coursed brick extending across the roofline, and the brick parapet above.

The west elevation of the O'Connell School is largely identical to the east elevation, with the exception that the bay on the north side of the southernmost side entry was erected in 1920 and thus matches the construction details of other work from this period. A second notable difference between the west and east elevations is the presence of a pedimented parapet on the northernmost bay of the 1920 addition. The passageway connecting the school to the gymnasium is attached immediately to the north of this bay and connects to the 1927 addition at the height of the first floor. It then drops to ground level after extending westward roughly twenty-five feet. The passageway has a flat roof that angles downward as it accommodates the half-story change to ground level. The exterior of the passageway is clad in brick and it is lit by a run of three multi-pane, aluminum hopper windows. Before the passageway connects to the gymnasium/auditorium there are entrances on both the north and south sides, which are shielded by flat hoods supported by slender, aluminum posts. The doorways are set within narrow limestone frames and feature pairs of metal doors topped by three-light transoms. A narrow limestone cornice runs along the passageway's roofline.

The gymnasium/auditorium building consists of a two-story, central, red-brick block surrounded by single-story, red-brick ells on its south, east and west elevations. All of the walls are laid in a common bond pattern and the flat roofs are lined by a flat limestone cornice. The main entrance to the building is on the south side and is the focal point of the structure. It is composed of three pairs of metal doors that are topped by single-light transoms and recessed within a wide, projecting, limestone surround. This entrance is set within a projecting pavilion, which is flanked by slightly shorter pavilions to the east and west, each set with a single window. These, in turn, are flanked by recessed, single-story wings on either side of the main block of the building. Openings throughout this building are small and symmetrically spaced on all elevations. On the upper levels of the auditorium, the windows are filled with a combination of glass block and steel hopper sash. All of the window openings have limestone lintels and brick headers.

The O'Connell School incorporates 50,500 total square feet with 22 classrooms, a library, special study rooms, and lavatories on three floor levels of the main building, as well as the connected gymnasium/auditorium, which housed a kitchen, locker rooms and additional lavatories. The interior plan of the building is comprised of one long, central, double-loaded, north-south corridor with stairs at the south end. The central corridor is intersected by three perpendicular corridors running from east-west. The central corridor is accessed from the entry centered on the south side of the school, while the intersecting corridors have stairwells at either end. These lead between each floor as well as in and out of the building. The northernmost stair corridor connects on its west side to the passageway linking the school building to the gymnasium/auditorium. Four of the six classrooms housed on the south side of two primary floors of the original block (1914) are arranged in pairs flanking the central stairwell, while the fifth and sixth rooms are located in the two-story block at the northeast corner of the original building. The northwest corner of the original building was filled in with two classrooms in 1920, the same time that eight additional (four on each story) classrooms were erected on the north side of the school. Four more classrooms (two on each side of the central corridor) were added at the far northern end of the building in 1927.

The three levels of the original building share a similar plan, with classrooms flanking the central (north-south) corridor. The primary entry is through the doors centered on the south side of the building. Here two metal doors, each with one narrow light, lead into a small vestibule. This space has wood floors and steps, plaster walls, and a pressed metal ceiling. It leads into the building's central hallway through a pair of full-height, single-light doors with ash rails and brass hardware. The door is topped by a pivoting, six-light transom. The doors lead into the building's central corridor, where coat rooms and classrooms are located directly to the east and west. The western coat room retains its original "sanitary drain," which catches water dripping off of coats and umbrellas stored in this area.

The classrooms and hallways in the original 1914 portion of the building retain the majority of their historic interior details. This includes maple plank or tongue-and-groove flooring; wide, ash mopboards, chair rails, chalk trays, window sills and door trim; slate blackboards; plaster walls; and metal ceilings. The classrooms are flooded with natural light from their large window openings and coat closets and built-in bookcases with glass cases above and drawers below can also be found in many of these spaces. Although the wood surrounds framing the entries to the classrooms remain intact, new classroom doors were installed and many of the transoms were infilled as part of a 1957 project. Original paneled wood doors remain in many of the interior spaces. Most retain their original brass hardware.

The design details found in the original 1914 block are carried throughout the majority of the subsequent additions, although some of the later spaces feature larger built-in cabinets, and others have non-original floor or ceiling finishes, namely vinyl or acoustic tile. The rear portions of the central corridor floors are finished with composite tile flooring that was likely installed during a 1981 renovation. Despite these changes, the classrooms in the 1920 and 1927 blocks retain the majority of their original details, including maple plank or tongue-and-groove flooring; wide ash mopboards, chair rails, chalk trays, window sills and door trim; slate blackboards; plaster walls; and pressed metal ceilings. Although a classroom on the western side of the 1920 addition was converted to administrative space and new partition walls, new cabinets and counters added as part of the 1981 renovation, this space retains its original paneled wood doors, trim, and chair rails.

The stairways throughout the school are well-lit by tall, narrow windows. The stairwells have concrete floors and stairs, and plaster walls and ceilings. Steel newel posts with chamfered corners and rounded tops and square steel balusters support molded wood handrails flanking the stairs, while wood balusters and railings can be found on some of the stair landings.

The school's second floor is almost identical in plan to the first except that there are four full classrooms along the west wall of the north corridor instead of administrative space. The Principal's Office is located in the original building situated above the entry vestibule. The office is separated from the corridor by a five-section wood wall composed of three-paneled wood sections topped by two rows of frosted fixed windows above. The window wall is flanked on each side by a single wood door. The design of the space lends privacy to the office, while also allowing natural light from the south elevation into the hallway.

The basement level of the school does not appear to have been fitted out at an early date. At the south end of the building, within the original structure, there are two classrooms arranged on either side of a pair of coatrooms supplied with toilets. The first of the three east-west corridors is found immediately north of these rooms. The boiler room is located at the northeast corner of the basement level of the 1914 building, and is accessed from a short, ramped corridor that also leads to an exit on the east elevation. The custodian's room is across the hall from the boiler room and the entrance to the art room is immediately opposite the utility corridor on the western side of the central hall. Continuing north, the boys' and girls' lavatories are on the west side of the central corridor and a small classroom is situated to the east. North of the second east-west corridor is a choral/music room on the west and a storage room to the east. The third and final east-west corridor leads to exits on the east and west sides of the building, and into the sunken library area reached via a pair of short stairwells at the northern end of the school. The basement-level classrooms and corridors have painted brick walls and the floors are composite tile or carpet likely completed as part of the 1981 renovation.

The passageway leading from the school building to the combined gymnasium/auditorium has cinder block walls and concrete steps. Squared steel newel posts support a pair of rounded wooden railings running down the center of the short stair leading from the school's first floor to ground level. The gymnasium/auditorium space has concrete block walls and 22- 22-foot-high ceilings supported by supported by steel joists and covered in acoustic tile. The large open space is lit by banks of fluorescent lights and is ventilated by caged ceiling fans. A stage is located at the north end of the room and is framed by a plain recessed tile surround. The wood strip flooring remains and appears to be in good condition. Windows are set high on the east and west walls and have hopper sash flanked by glass block. Metal fire doors provide access to the space from the three entrances on the south side of the building, as well as from the passageway. Boys' and girls' lockers rooms with showers are located within an ell running along the eastern side of the building, while a kitchen is located along the west elevation. The locker rooms retain their original square tile walls and mosaic tile floors and the kitchen walls are clad in green sanitary tiles and have quarry tile floors.

Although modern fluorescent lighting has been added throughout the building, its impact is minimized by the fact that the original pressed metal ceilings have largely been preserved. In addition, while doors to all of the classrooms were replaced in 1957 as part of a large, multi-district project, the ash door surrounds and transom frames were retained. Metal fire doors with glass block transoms were also installed at the stairwells throughout, and a classroom on the western side of the 1920 addition was converted to administrative offices. Sections of the corridor walls in the rear portions of the building were built out to make space for banks of lockers as part of the 1981 renovation, while the replacement of the original multi-paned windows with one-over-one double-hung aluminum sash was completed at an unknown date.