Abandoned School Building in PA

Manor Street Elementary School, Columbia Pennsylvania

Date added: December 14, 2023 Categories:

The Manor Street School is one of three extant grade schools that represent the borough's late nineteenth/early twentieth century shift back to decentralized schools. From 1807, when the first public school was established, until 1862 the borough used six decentralized schools to educate local children. In 1862 the school board replaced these schools with one large building, the Cherry Street School, which could house all students in Columbia. This building served as the central school for all pupils until about 1880. At that time the school board concluded that the advantages of decentralized schools outweighed the advantages of a central school, especially as burgeoning industry brought growing numbers of residents and school-age children into Columbia. As a result, the Sixth Street School was erected at the corner of Cherry and Sixth Streets. Soon after in 1884, the Poplar Street School was built on Poplar and Third Streets to serve the northern side of Columbia. Manor Street School was constructed in 1895 to educate children on the east side of the borough. In 1905 the William G. Taylor School was erected on Ninth Street above Walnut Street for "uptown" students. The Cherry Street School was also converted into a neighborhood grade school. These five neighborhood grade schools, plus a high school, comprised Columbia's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century school system. Of these schools, only the Poplar Street, Taylor, and Manor Street Schools survive to represent the municipality's change back to decentralized schools.

Architecturally the Manor Street School is an outstanding example of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century school architecture in Columbia. The Manor Street School features well-proportioned massing and nicely executed detailing. Each facade is marked by three symmetrically arranged sections. Each section is differentiated by the vertical thrust of either a cross gable accented with a denticulated cornice, or a chimney, or a bell tower. Yet the three sections of each elevation are united by the strong horizontal line of the denticulated cornice that wraps around the building. Three bays of windows accented by brick relieving arches are also repeated across the three sections in order to unite each facade.

The Manor Street School is quite different in styling from one of the other two surviving contemporary schools. The Poplar Street School is a Queen Anne building. It is a 2½ story rectangular edifice that has four brick chimneys with elaborate corbeled details, round-headed 6/6 windows on the first floor, flat-headed 6/6 windows on the second floor, and a central front pediment ornamented with a terra cotta scroll motif and finials.

The other extant contemporary school, the Taylor School, also offers architectural elements that contrast with the Manor Street School. The Taylor School is similar to the Manor Street School in massing. Both schools are 2½ story buildings with a central three-bay block flanked by three-bay wings. However, the Taylor School lacks most of the Colonial Revival features that accent the massing of the Manor Street School. An octagonal cupola sits atop the center of the main hipped roof on the Taylor School. A hipped roof dormer is centrally located back and above the roof line of each wing. The first-floor windows are semicircular blind arches rather than segmental relieving arches. Windows on the second floor of the Taylor School have smooth lintels with rusticated keystones.

Building Description

The Manor Street School is a 2½ story brick building situated on a large corner lot atop a knoll at the eastern side of Columbia Borough. It is surrounded by a church, firehouse, and late nineteenth-century residential buildings. Constructed in 1895, the school features elements of the Colonial Revival style, including pediments, front entry porch, front door with fanlight, and symmetrically arranged, double hung windows.

The Manor Street School has a cross-axial, two-story plan with a two-story main central block flanked on its east and west sides by large two-story wings. The first and second stories are of solid masonry brick construction supported on a raised stone foundation of coursed and dressed limestone with a sandstone watertable course at the first-floor line. Hard-pressed baked red brick is used on the first and second stories with buff-white colored bricks highlighting all window and door heads and brick dentils at the cornice line. The entire building is topped with a low-sloped hip roof with various projecting cross gables.

The primary facade of the building is its south facade. The composition of this facade reflects the interior floor plan arrangement; that is, a central block flanked by adjacent wings. The two-story facade is composed of nine bays. The three bays on the central block set the pattern for the three bays on each of the flanking wings. That pattern includes a pair of double-hung windows in the second bay flanked by single double-hung windows in the first and third bays. All windows have brick-segmental relieving arches and stone sills. A large cross gable caps the three bays and contains a large semicircular window. This same pattern of window fenestration is repeated on each wing and each floor of this facade. The difference between the central block and the wings is that the bays in the wings are much wider, and the topping cross gable is only over the second bay rather than over all three.

The south facade's prominence is marked by the large frame bell tower rising from a truncated pediment above the central block of the facade. The tower is in three sections: a raised-panel base, a central portion with a pair of round-arched louver vents on each side, and the whole topped by a bell-shaped roof. Each section is separated by a denticulated cornice which matches the building's main cornice. Beneath the tower is the main entrance door. The entrance is marked by projecting corbeled brick pilasters on each side of a recessed opening with double wooden doors. The pilasters support a small decorative balcony above with a pressed-metal balustrade.

The original north facade is identical to the south facade with the exclusion of the absence of the pilasters and balcony, and bell tower. The bell tower's position is marked by a large brick gable instead. A toilet room addition was built onto the first floor of the center three-bay section. This addition is plain brick with a shed roof and double entry doors on the north side.

The west facade is six bays wide, with three bays on each side of the large central chimney. Paired double-hung windows with brick relieving arches and stone sills pierce each bay. Small cross gables with semicircular windows are centered at the roof line above the second and fifth bays. The central chimney rises approximately ten to twelve feet above the main cornice, and it is topped by a large mass of brick corbeling and recesses.

The east facade is identical to the west facade except that the large chimney on the east facade is replaced by a false chimney which which only rises about half the distance above the main cornice. Also, on the second floor on the false chimney is a large date stone. The "date stone" is actually made up of various terra-cotta blocks which form a border-framed block with raised letters saying: AD 1895.

The main cornice is of painted wood, and continues around the whole building at the roof line and also along all the gable rakes. A secondary cornice, below the main cornice (with projecting brick forming dentils), is formed by the brick recesses on the first and third bays of each three-bay configuration on the south and north facades.

The interior plan is identical on all three floors. It consists of a large central corridor in the main block flanked on its east and west sides by two large classrooms in each wing. Each classroom has a separate coat room located in the main block. Two tiers of metal hooks line the walls of the coat rooms. The classroom walls are plastered above a tongue and groove-boarded wainscot, which encircles each classroom. The two interior walls of each room contain alternating slate chalkboards and bulletin boards. The floors are of narrow tongue and groove flooring. The window and door trim is a fluted-type wood molding with quarter-circle pieces at each corner, with simple wood sills for the windows. The basement rooms are finished except for the plastered ceiling and concrete floor.

The overall condition of the building is fair. The school has two major additions. The toilet room addition was built in the 1930s-1940s, and two stair towers in the interior central hall replaced an original central stair in about 1960. However, these changes do not drastically alter the interior floor plan or affect the appearance of the primary, front facade. Other changes to the building have come through disuse and water damage. All the masonry walls are intact, but some extensive repointing is needed on the west and east facades near the roof line due to water damage. First-floor windows and doors have been boarded up on the exterior, as have some of the second-floor windows on the interior. The northern classrooms have suffered extensive water damage that has caused the deterioration of wood trim and plaster.