This old High School in CT closed in 1984

Woodrow Wilson High School, Middletown Connecticut

Date added: January 29, 2024 Categories:

Woodrow Wilson High School was built in 1930-31 as the first modern high school in the City of Middletown. It served first as a high school and in 1956 converted to use as a junior high school.

From the eighteenth century until 1930, the City of Middletown had been divided into two school districts, the City District and the Town District. The first high school was built in 1895 in the heart of the City District, only two blocks from the downtown commercial center on Main Street. Like many cities in the northeast, Middletown had experienced a rapid population growth in the postwar period, largely due to immigration from Europe. This growth was the climax of a trend that had begun in the mid-nineteenth century with large-scale immigration from Ireland. As early as 1920, school records indicate that 50% of the population of the City District were foreign-born. The increase in population was not confined to the City District, however. Over half of the high school students lived in the surrounding Town District; the majority of these lived in the southern part of town where residential development was keeping pace with industrial growth. A new elementary school, the Farm Hill School, had been built here to meet the needs of the neighborhood. The original high school facilities had become inadequate and, perhaps more importantly, outmoded because of the prevailing educational philosophy which decreed that the whole child must be trained in living as well as work skills, in a moral, healthful atmosphere. The "corrupting" influence of the city's business district was clearly not conducive to this approach to education. When a 20-acre site in a rural/residential area just south of the industrial section became available, the Middletown Common Council, at the urging of the school board, authorized the building of a new school on the site. Originally intended to be a junior high through eighth grade to encourage more students to remain in school past the elementary level, the final plans called for a high school to house 750 pupils, at a cost of $260,000, a considerable sum at the height of the Depression.

The new school was designed by architects Towner and Sellew to be the most progressive response to the new "psychology of learning." For the first time in Middletown, three courses of study were provided: college preparatory, commercial, and general. In addition to standard classrooms, the plans also called for many specialized rooms. They included a rifle range; carpenter and 'metalwork shops; a science lab; drafting, art, and music rooms; and several rooms set aside exclusively for the girls to learn homemaking skills. Even a completely furnished model living room was incorporated in the design. This broad program of teaching life and career skills had a practical basis, but it was also believed to be important to have each child develop his/her full potential. The socializing influence of education was also considered to be an effective antidote to the perceived general decline in public morality that preceded the Depression. In addition, schools were expected to promote the qualities needed in the workplace, diligence, and punctuality; in sum, the goals set forth by Dewey and other liberal educators of the early twentieth century, who saw public education as the agent of social reform and the basis of democratic ideology.

There was an explicit effort to make the construction of the school a local endeavor, an understandable attitude in this period. The then serving Mayor Bielfield was quoted in the local newspaper concerning the number of jobs that school construction would provide, "expecting that 80 men would find work for the expected full year of construction." The architects were a local firm chosen out of a field of five from all over the state. Their office was on Main Street in the Guy Rice Building. William T. Towner (1870-1950), the principal partner, also served as the head of the building committee. Towner was born in Hastings, England, and educated at the Royal Institute of London. He came to this country in 1890 and maintained a practice in New York. For the last 20 years of his life he lived and worked in Middletown, specializing in school buildings and churches. The contractor was also a Middletown man, Linus Baldwin, who had built two other public schools and a large parochial school, St. Mary's, in the city. Even the name chosen for the school had local significance. Although the identification of the school with Woodrow Wilson was hardly surprising at this time, as he was much admired by the general public as the "war president," Wilson was "well-remembered by old residents" of Middletown from his tenure as a professor of history at Wesleyan University (then a college) from 1888-1890.

Upon completion the school received public acclamation. In his annual report to the City of Middletown in 1931, the year it was finished, the superintendent noted that it was a building in which "no essential detail was omitted which is necessary to meet the demands of present-day education." The newspaper reported that New York contractors, had inspected the work which "would pass for a half million dollar job in the big city."

By 1956 a new high school was needed. It was also called Woodrow Wilson and was built directly across the street; the older school became a junior high or middle school. The 1970s saw the building of yet another high school, called Middletown High, and the conversion of the 1895 building to elderly housing. With the current decline in enrollment, the two later high schools have been consolidated across Hunting Hill Avenue, and the original Woodrow Wilson High School, the first "modern" high school in Middletown, closed in June, 1984.

In its form and style, Woodrow Wilson High School resembles many of the schools built in Connecticut in the 1920s and the 1930s. As such it is a well-preserved example of Georgian Revival architecture. But to dismiss the building as merely representative of school architecture of the period is to miss the point. The school committee had traveled all over the state to see what other school systems were building. It is perhaps inevitable that they chose the Georgian Revival or "Colonial" style. It was appealing for several reasons. The new high school had to make a statement, to be as modern as the school's new educational program. Even though it has become an institutional architectural cliche, the Georgian Revival was the very latest institutional style, completely different from the "old-fashioned" Romanesque Revival high school built in 1895. More importantly, it was a style that embodied American traditional values, a most appropriate forum for the educational philosophy being espoused.

Towner and Sellew created a school for the City of Middletown that not only met the requirements of the educational program, but was also a monument to civic pride. The pride was justifiable. In 1931 the construction of this large a building represented a major commitment on the part of Middletown's citizens to the value of education. No public buildings of this size would be built in Middletown for another 50 years.

Within the limits of the budget the architects designed a building that had many of the architectural elements found in schools of the period: an imposing entrance and Georgian and Classical detailing. Less expensive materials were utilized to good effect. Cast concrete was substituted for carved limestone or terra cotta; standard red brick was chosen over textured or colored brick. Not only was this cheaper construction, but it also emphasized the "Colonial" appearance of the building, which is how it was referred to in public print. Raising the foundation was also cost-effective. It provided another level under more than half the building, but it served another purpose as well; making the building appear larger and more imposing.

Before the school was built the architects eliminated more than 17 items from the plan as a cost-saving measure. The $50,000 saved from the original amount bonded was used for the purchase of school equipment and furniture. Some of the savings eliminated non-essential items such as interior architectural detail. Even the public spaces like the auditorium and entrance lobby, where money is usually expended, have minimal detail. Surprisingly enough, one of the more costly non-essential architectural features was retained, the large arched opening at the rear of the stage in the auditorium. Although the opening was fitted with double-glazed doors, probably to facilitate the moving of stage sets or equipment, this feature is more decorative than functional. It may have been retained in the final plans to add architectural interest to the rear (west) elevation, a highly visible secondary facade. Its small flanking windows are integrated with the rest of the design by the addition of keystones. Because the windows received no architectural treatment on the inside, it was apparently intended that part of the rear wall of the stage be curtained off from public view. The central opening is cased and could be visible during school assemblies, but certainly was hidden by stage sets or backdrops during dramatic productions.

Building Description

Woodrow Wilson High School is a load-bearing masonry building of brick and concrete built in 1930-31 in the Georgian Revival style, with a Classical Revival-style entrance pavilion. It is located in the southern part of the City of Middletown in a suburban residential neighborhood that developed between 1930 and 1950. Prior to 1930, the area was primarily rural with a few houses built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The school site had been part of a working farm. Hunting Hill Avenue was laid out in this area when the school was constructed. Across Hunting Hill Avenue is the second Woodrow Wilson High School built in 1956. To the rear is a large municipal field that predates 1930 and formed part of the high school's playing field.

The original main block (200' x 65') has a hip roof covered with slate. It extends along Hunting Hill Avenue, facing east, with an axially balanced facade, three stories in height, and a centrally located entrance pavilion. Constructed of simulated stone (cast of concrete), this pavilion has a full pediment with modillions, a two-story section containing two pairs of pilasters, flanking three-part, multi-paned windows (second and third floors), and the main entrance to the building. The Classical Revival influence is displayed in the molded swags in the panel between the windows, a motif that is repeated in the pediment, and the Corinthian capitals on the pilasters. On either side of the main pavilion, a four-bay projection of brick is set off from the facade by the cast-concrete quoins, a Georgian Revival-style feature. The Georgian stylistic influence is also seen in the use of keystones in the window lintels of the entire facade. The more elaborate treatment of this type is reserved for the windows in the flanking four-bay sections, where the first- and second-floor windows utilize a one-piece, cast lintel facing which incorporates the keystone. The third-floor windows have brick lintels with a contrasting keystone of cast concrete. Similarly, "keystones" are found on the remaining windows of the facade on the first and second floors. The hip roof of the main block is covered with slate and surmounted by a bell tower with a dome. The arched windows of the two-staged tower are presently hidden by modern aluminum siding, one of two exterior alterations made to the historic fabric of the building. The other was the addition of one set of modern windows on the top floor of the south elevation.

Matching large tri-partite windows topped by semi-circular fanlights occur at each end of the main block and provide light to the stairwells at each end and the central corridors that run the length of the building. The glazing in the south end is a replacement. This typical Georgian Revival-style feature is also found at the rear of the original auditorium/gymnasium addition at the rear. Also three stories in height and constructed of brick masonry, this addition has a one-story concrete block extension at the first floor to add additional floor space to the gymnasium (40' x 62'). In 1960 a large one-story brick addition (62' x 132'), which houses the offices of the superintendent of schools in Middletown, was added to the north elevation.

The main block of the school is laid out with a typical plan; classrooms open off the central corridor. The corridor walls are finished with glazed square tile; the floors are currently asphalt tile except in the lobby, which has terrazzo floors. Banks of metal lockers are recessed into the walls. The classrooms are quite utilitarian, with plain painted or varnished oak trim. Doors to classrooms are glazed in the upper portion. A few classrooms have built-in shelves or cabinets; some were removed by the city before the building was sold in 1985. The original classroom spaces, as well as the special-purpose rooms, such as the library, shops, etc., which open off the central corridors, have minimal changes. Acoustical tile ceilings have been installed in the classrooms and corridors, lowering the ceilings to about one foot above the top of the window and door casings, and not hiding any significant architectural details. The lobby of the building, up one flight from the main entrance, has minimal architectural detail, as does the auditorium. In the library is a special feature: a mural depicting the history of Middletown, oil on canvas, commissioned by the Federal Arts Project in the 1930s and the work of a local artist, A. B. McCutcheon.