Howard Park Public School (P.S.) 218, Baltimore Maryland

Date added: December 01, 2023 Categories:

1907 school, main facade, looking southwest (1999)

Built in 1908 in the northwestern Baltimore neighborhood of Howard Park, P.S. 218 is an excellent example of the classic American neighborhood school building in several ways. In 1908, the school was constructed to educate the founding families of what was then a suburban Baltimore County community. This simple facility mirrored the national trends in educational architecture as a two-story brick building with large, open classrooms with ample natural light. As the Howard Park community grew, the building was enlarged in 1913 to include a total of eleven classrooms to accommodate a rapidly growing school population. In 1918, the school was annexed to Baltimore City, transferring jurisdiction to the City school board. In response to the larger number of school students and to the scandal of the 1921 Strayer Survey of the Baltimore School District which criticized the conditions of the city schools, an addition was built in 1936 to expand the footprint of the elementary school building. Twenty years later in response to the community's call for expanded recreational and educational facilities, another wing was added. In 1980, the school was decommissioned and vacated and currently awaits rehabilitation.

The development of the public education system in the United States began in the late eighteenth century as state and Federal legislators acknowledged the need for a government-supported system of instruction for all citizens. Organized efforts to establish a state-wide system of free public schools and educational standards began in 1825, but were not widely accepted until the mid-nineteenth century when all Maryland counties voted to accept these standards for curriculum, taxation and funding, and teacher certification.

In Baltimore County, specifically, an attempt to formalize education began with Act of 1723 and shortly thereafter with the division of the county into election districts, a system that would govern the way in which schools were handled by the School Board through the twentieth century. The system grew slowly at first, mainly from a lack of funding, and little was done through the mid-nineteenth century to improve education within the county. The overwhelming public perception of public education as charity for the poor kept many families from supporting the establishment of schools in their neighborhoods.

Many different types of problems hampered the growth of the system, including conflicting ideas on curriculum, adequate staffing requirements, and lack of knowledgeable leadership. One of the most pointed concerns were the deplorable physical conditions of the entire school system. One of the first surveys sponsored by the county school commissioners in 1857 found all ninety-nine schools (of brick, stone, frame, or log) in the district to be substandard, often because they were small and housed in buildings constructed and/or used for other purposes.

In response to this survey, the school commissioners set out a building program that included an analysis of need, the selection of school siting, and standardized architectural designs. It was at this time that the awareness of the impact of physical conditions on the student's ability to learn began to emerge, and this awareness guided school design and construction through the early twentieth century.

Perhaps no provision for common school education has been so neglected as the proper construction and ventilation of schoolhouses. Shelter and warmth have heretofore been considered the only requisites... We wish to introduce into our new houses as many of the modern improvements as our means will justify: space enough for each pupil to perform his or her work without interruption; pure air sufficient to preserve health; ventilators for carrying off the poisoned gases; light properly diffused; and ornament where it would not cost more than deformity.

Throughout the balance of the nineteenth century, Baltimore County responded to the national and local advancements in the field of education and adapted its curriculum and building programs to conform to national standards. A system of dividing students by age (grading) and the adoption of a course of study revolutionized the classroom experience, and greater attention to "modern improvements" such as better lighting and ventilation improved the physical environment for both students and teachers. Greater taxation and better funding kept the Baltimore County school commissioners repairing and building school buildings into the first decades of the twentieth century.

In 1908, Howard Park P.S. 218, then known as School #7 in Election District #1, was built at the corner of Liberty Heights and Woodbine Avenues in what was quickly becoming the center of Howard Park. Howard Park was a rapidly growing community that began to form on the northwest outskirts of Baltimore City in the late nineteenth century. Two land developers formed a railway company that could shuttle people from the city, and this served as the impetus for the neighborhood that grew up along Liberty Heights Avenue. Residential development slowly increased from three houses in 1898 to several dozen in the early 1910s. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the neighborhood was developing to the degree that local amenities were required. At the December 11^th, 1907 meeting of the county school board, "a delegation from Howard Park asked for a new school in that section to accommodate over two hundred children." Apparently, the School Board's request to the County Commissioners in 1906 for $2000 to build a school at Howard Park went unanswered, prompting residents to take matters into their own hands and raise the money themselves.

After the construction of the school, the first local store followed shortly, as did the firehouse and town hall in 1910 and the first church in 1913. The sequence of construction and development of key community buildings indicates that the school was at the forefront of the community's needs, and that it was not suitable to hold classes in the local tavern, as some early residents opined. The construction of this school fit into Superintendent Cook's agenda to improve all school facilities because he recognized that "People want school buildings as well adapted to the purpose of the modern schools as the modern home is to the purposes of the home."

The initial 1908 building was a rectangular brick building, nine bays across the front and five bays along the side, which included the six classrooms at the front of the building and housed grades kindergarten through 8. It was one of only approximately 50 brick school buildings in Baltimore County (out of a total of 184), at a time when frame school construction still dominated. Although it was not explicitly stated in the minutes or reports of the School Board, the architect and school officials appeared to have the foresight that Howard Park would continue to grow and the school would continue to expand. This design deliberately allowed for future expansion at the rear of the building without great difficulty. References in the School Board Minutes between August 1907 and December 1908 - the construction period of the school- to Architect Thomas L. Jones & Sons suggests that they may be responsible for the design and construction of the school.

It was not until 1911 that Howard Park was first included in the School Board's Annual Report, although references to repairs and activities at the school in the School Board minutes clearly indicate that it was an operating school. For the school year ending July 31^st, 1911, Howard Park was the largest of nine elementary schools in District 1 with six teachers, including a principal, and 298 students. The next largest elementary school in this large district was School #6 with only 167 students. It ranked 15^th out of 176 elementary schools in total expenses, which included fuel, furniture, salaries, and various supplies, indicating its relative size and position within the overall system. In terms of enrollment, Howard Park ranked 7^th out of the 176 elementary schools, rivaled by three schools in District 12 and one each for Districts 3, 13, and 14.

The standard curriculum for this grade school followed what had been established by the School Board under A.S. Cook in the early 1900s. This curriculum included the basic reading and language skills, mathematics, geography and history, art and music programs, manual training programs, and eventually a physical education course. By 1911, Howard Park was one of the few schools in District #1 with a spending record for Kindergarten and Manual Training programs.

These statistics show Howard Park as the preeminent elementary school of District 1 and within the top 10% of elementary schools of the county's 15 white school districts. As early as 1912, the School Board realized that the school built in 1908 was too small to house the growing number of students, with approximately 43 students per room. In July 1912, the Board decided to build an addition to Howard Park, and the job went to contractor John Cowan who won with the lowest bid of $13,975,40. This addition replicated the design of the earlier building and matched so carefully that the separation between the two sections can only be seen by a careful examination of the brick bond on the east and west facades and the physical evidence in the attic.

With this addition, the school now more comfortably housed approximately 280 children and 8 teachers. The added rooms would allow for specialized classrooms for kindergarten, manual training, and other activities. The resulting building met the criteria set locally and nationally for school construction. Its brick construction met the fireproof test, and fire exits around the building met egress standards for the time. Also valued for their fireproof nature, metal ceilings in the classrooms and slate roofs were required by the School Board. The Sanitary Schoolhouses Legislation of 1902, led by the National Education Association no doubt influenced the design of this and other county school buildings in terms of the sunlight and ventilation requirements. Howard Park meet the standard classroom measurements mandated by the 1902 legislation and the classroom arrangements and number of windows on each facade satisfied the amount of sunlight required per pupil per classroom. Although the school provided appropriately sized classrooms and cloakrooms, it still did not have a dedicated library or manual training space.

Because of the successive improvement and extension of the rail line into the northwest suburbs, Howard Park continued to flourish. Housing trends grew at an ever-increasing rate, with most of the neighborhood developed by 1915. The area developed into a community of white, middle-class city commuters who owned their own single-family homes on large, landscaped lots. The commercial, religious, and civic center of the community developed along Liberty Heights Avenue, with curved, tree-lined streets leading back into the residential sections. Howard Park served as the school for most neighboring communities, including Windsor Hills, Gwynn Oak Summit, Liberty Heights, and West Arlington. The two closest schools were Hillsdale in District #1 and Woodlawn in District #2. Both had relatively small school populations of 224 and 85 students, respectively, compared to 370 students at Howard Park.

In 1918, the last and final amount of land was annexed by Baltimore City, enlarging the city limits from thirty-two to ninety-two square miles and included Howard Park. Along with the routine street paving and other municipal improvements, the Howard Park school was added to the city school system and assigned the number P.S. 218. It was now one of the one hundred and fifty public grammar, or elementary, schools in Baltimore. As Amy Crewe notes in her history of the Baltimore County elementary school system, "..Baltimore County lost nineteen of its largest schools, including most of its modern buildings, more than 200 teachers, about 10,000 pupils, ..." By this time, the eleven-room school building housed ten teachers and four hundred and ten students ranging from grades one to eight. At the time of annexation, Howard Park had nine full-time teachers and 418 students in its eleven classrooms. It still ranked as the largest and most prominent elementary school in its district, and fell within the top 10% of all the county schools in terms of enrollment, costs related to textbooks and specialized courses, and other supplies.

In 1921, the Baltimore Board of School Commissioners, in conjunction with the National Education Association, commissioned the Strayer School Survey to investigate and report on the condition of urban education. The study reported on both the curriculum and administration of the education system, and also surveyed the physical condition of the school buildings because the success or failure of the educational program in any public school system depends in large measure upon the type and adequacy of the school housing provisions. The much-publicized results appalled the city and the Nation, with less than half of the school buildings receiving a passing grade. Some of the reasons cited included a lack of playgrounds and other recreational facilities, non-fireproof construction, overcrowding, and inadequate heating and lighting. Changes in the schools were instituted almost immediately, and most of these changes defined the requirements of the modern-day school.

P.S. 218 had adequate lighting, a fire escape, and was relatively fireproof. It was, however, dangerously overcrowded with four hundred and seventy-five students for an eleven-room school building in 1923. Early Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps of the Howard Park neighborhood show four trailers in the southeastern corner of the lot; the trailers were maintained until the mid-1930s. The trailers were known as "portables", one-story frame buildings used as additional classroom space. They were located on the school's dedicated playground space, thereby creating yet another black mark against the school according to the Strayer checklist.

As an immediate response to the Strayer survey, the City purchased the adjacent lots to Howard Park P.S. 218 in 1921 for additional playground space, extending the school property boundaries to include one block. Long-term changes, particularly overcrowding, were finally addressed in 1936 when the City's Public Improvements Commission enlisted local Baltimore architect Lucius R. White, Jr. to design a new wing for the original 1908/13 school. With an enrollment of 526 students and fourteen teachers in the 1935-36 school year, the original building and the extra trailers could not handle the mass of students. In the post-World War I years, the Howard Park community had experienced a continued building boom, funneling more students away from inner-city schools to neighborhoods like Howard Park along the fringe of the city limits. School overcrowding was also alleviated by the construction of the parochial elementary school run by All Saints' Church.

White designed and the Laceli Construction Company built a two-story, nine-classroom fire-proof addition off the rear of the 1908 building to replace the "portables" in the schoolyard. The addition cost $118,947.63 and was funded in large part by Federal monies appropriated under the Baltimore City Public Works Program of 1933. White, having graduated from Baltimore City College in 1905 and the University of Pennsylvania in 1909, operated his own architectural firm in the 1920s through the 1960s and designed many scholastic buildings in and around Baltimore including P.S. 70, Southern High School, and many of the Loyola College buildings. White's design, reflecting the popular vernacular Art Deco style, managed to embody the characteristic 1930s school design. Features such as glazed brick surfaces were viewed as cleaner and more "sanitary" and the large banks of windows that dominate the facades provided additional light and fresh air.

Although the new wing allowed for a designated kindergarten room, it still did not allow for other special purposes or recreation facilities like the Strayer Survey recommended. The building still did not have an auditorium, gymnasium, or cafeteria, primarily because they were not required. The neighborhood was small enough that students continued to return home for lunch or use a local facility for large assemblies. However, four hundred plus students divided among twenty, rather than eleven, classrooms with a large playground was an improvement. As the new wing was constructed, improvements were made to the 1908/13 building, including the upgrading of plumbing and wiring systems. Curriculum changes instituted after the Strayer Survey included the move to the "6-3-3" system, which divided students into something similar to today's system. Students attended grades one through six in an elementary school before attending the junior high school for three years, and finally the high school for grades ten through twelve.

Howard Park P.S. 218 continued to serve the community through World War II and the post-war decades. The 1950s and 1960s marked a time of change for Baltimore City and the surrounding county as middle and upper-class white citizens migrated further and further away from the urban core and many older neighborhoods fell into disrepair. Howard Park continued to be a stable, middle-class neighborhood and saw a large influx of African American families occupy the early twentieth-century homes that had been vacated by families moving out towards Towson and Reisterstown. In 1957, the City School Board built another addition to the school to house a dedicated auditorium, cafeteria, and library space. In 1980, P.S. 218 was closed and the student body transferred to Calvin Rodwell Elementary in the neighboring community of Forest Park. The 1908/1936 school building was vacated, and the 1957 building has remained open as a community center and is known today as the Forest Park Senior Center.

Building Description

Howard Park P.S. 218 at 4801 Liberty Heights Avenue in Baltimore City, Maryland is an early twentieth-century brick school building located in the intact historic west Baltimore neighborhood of Howard Park. Situated on a 2.78-acre lot at the intersection of Liberty Heights, Howard Park, and Woodbine Avenues, this school is one of the remaining physical and visual anchors of this early twentieth-century residential neighborhood that developed along Liberty Heights Avenue, one of the main western thoroughfares from Baltimore County into Baltimore City. The building footprint occupies the northeastern two-thirds of the property, with grass and sparse landscaping to the east, and a large concrete parking lot to the southwest. The entire polygonal lot is enclosed by a chain-link fence. Two residential lots in the northwestern corner of the site complete the block.

P.S. #218 was built in three phases over a period of fifty years. The earliest school building was constructed in 1908 and enlarged in 1913, in a vernacular Neo-classical style. In 1936, the building was again enlarged with a two-story, nine-classroom vernacular Art Deco addition to the southwest. Finally, in 1957, the school was expanded once again with a modern addition to the northwest. Both the 1908/1913 and 1936 sections of the school are built of brick and accented with limestone details, visually uniting the construction phases. The school's building phases are as distinguished, both stylistically and materially, on the interior as they are on the exterior. The original 1908/13 school retains its large classrooms that typically feature decorative metal ceilings, built-in wood cabinets, and maple hardwood floors. The changing attitudes of school design of the 1920s and 30s is reflected in the sanitary glazed brick surfaces and plainly detailed classrooms of the 1936 addition. A 1957 addition stands to the west of the building. The addition is connected to the 1936 building by a single narrow corridor off a secondary elevation.

The early school building is a two-and-a-half-story brick building on a raised stone basement with a hipped slate roof. The building was constructed in two phases in 1908 and 1913, utilizing an identical architectural vocabulary, resulting in a building seemingly constructed at one time. Each facade is ten bays wide, giving the building its square shape. This shape is accentuated by the trim, which is executed in limestone and emphasizes the horizontal plane of the building. At the basement level, a narrow sill and heavy header frames each of the small windows. Just above the windows, a heavy water table distinctly marks the passage to a different section of the building, both in design and material. On the second floor, the windows are offset by narrow limestone beltcourses, and the third floor only features a beltcourse along the bottom of the sash.

On the three primary facades (the northwest, northeast, and southeast), a single row of six-over-six wood sashes mark the ground floor and two rows of nine-over-one single-hung wood sashes mark the first and second floors. On the rear (southwest) facade, only the second-floor windows are visible above the 1936 addition. At the roofline, a heavy, simple Neo-Classical pressed metal cornice smoothes the transition between the brick walls and the wide eaves of the hipped roof, which is punctuated by two wide brick chimneys at the ridge. On the main (northeast) side of the roof, a small hipped dormer with paired four-lite sashes is located above the projecting main entrance. On the other three facades, two small triangular vents are located near the cornice

In the center of the main (northeast) facade, a slightly projecting bay features the main entrance at the first floor and three windows at the second floor. The entrance is marked by a pair of wood doors with sidelights and a transom set in a wide limestone segmental arch with a keystone. The three second-floor wood windows are arranged in a twentieth-century adaptation of a Palladian window, with a large nine-over-one window flanked by two narrow six-over-one sash. A row of three fixed, multi-lite wood windows and a wide limestone lintel are located above the main window. The same limestone detailing that marks the main building continues on the projecting main entrance.

A 1936 addition abuts the rear (southwest) facade of the 1913 addition, and assumes similar massing and detailing of the earlier building which serves to visually unite the two sections. Designed by Baltimore architect Lucius R. White, Jr., this vernacular Art Deco-inspired brick addition is two stories high and continues the ground and first floor of the 1908 school. It has a slightly banked foundation and a flat asphalt roof bordered by brick parapet walls with stone coping. A tall brick smokestack is located in the center of the building near the rear facade. The addition maintains the same type of materials and scale of the earlier building, yet is distinguishable in its stripped-down Art Deco design.

The addition's southeast and northwest facades are dominated by banks of large, six-over-six steel sash separated by slightly projecting brick pilasters. The number of individual windows in each bank varies from four to six. Like the southwest facade, these walls are trimmed with limestone sills and lintels, and a brick beltcourse. The southwest facade features a projecting main entrance which is flanked by two large six-over-six steel windows per floor. These windows are set in large brick voids which are defined at each corner by slightly projecting brick pilasters. The wall surface is ornamented only with the limestone window sills and lintels that span the wall surface between the pilasters and the main entrance and the slightly projecting brick beltcourse that surrounds all three facades above the first-floor windows.

The design of the 1936 main entrance is executed in the sharp lines and industrial character of the Art Deco style. This entrance features a set of paired wood doors in a recessed opening marked by different levels of brick corbeling to either side of the door. Above the door at the first-floor level, an eight-over-eight single hung metal sash with a four-over-eight transom is set into a recessed opening, also marked by different levels of brick corbeling on the top and sides. Joined to the 1936 building in its northwesternmost corner is the large, three-story, flat-roofed, brick addition constructed in 1957. It is situated to the northwest of the 1908 /1936 building and connected with a narrow two-story corridor.

When the 1913 addition was made to the 1908 school, it was designed as a mirror image or the original, giving the appearance that the entire building had been constructed at the same time. 1908/13 school is organized with a classroom in each of the four corners of each floor, with a main stair in the entrance vestibule and a rear utilitarian stair in the rear half of the building. Each classroom is characterized as a wide, square room with maple floors and pressed metal ceilings with a narrow cloakroom at the back. Many of the original storage closets remain, although most are in poor condition. The original administrative office is located in the front of the building in the slightly projecting main entrance bay.

Internal access to the 1936 addition is via the former rear entrance of the 1908/13 school. A stair in the main entrance vestibule and a stair in the northwestern corner transported students between the addition's two corridors, which were finished with terrazzo floors and glazed brick walls. On the ground and first floors, the classrooms are large rectangular spaces defined by plaster walls and ceilings and maple hardwood floors. Like the earlier building, the classrooms typically feature rear cloakrooms and built-in storage cabinets. On the first floor, the large kindergarten room occupies the majority of the southeast facade and is the most ornate of all the rooms. The southern wall is finished with high wood batten wainscot and has a fireplace finished with a surround of Delft tiles and a fireback of glazed brick laid in a herringbone pattern.

Doorways in the northwest corner on the ground and first floors link the 1936 and 1957 additions; there is no internal access to this final addition from the 1908/13 building. Circulation patterns are dictated by a stair in the southeast corner and one in the center of the building, both of which lead from the ground to the second floor. This addition houses the special-purpose rooms for the entire school complex. The cafeteria and kitchen facilities are located on the ground floor and finished with glazed tile and exposed concrete block. The first floor is the most complex and provides space for the extra-curricular school activities that are not included in the earlier building and its additions. It houses the auditorium/gymnasium and associated facilities, lounge and meeting rooms, and craft rooms. The rooms are finished in traditional mid-twentieth-century school design materials including terrazzo, glazed brick, and concrete block.