What happens when you build a beautiful public school?

NYT: Reading, Writing, and Renewal (the Urban Kind)

It seems like this is the question that is being asked in this collaboration between John Hopkins and Morgan State Universities in building this new school building in East Baltimore. Their idea is to use the school building as a central space for the community, a revitalization project that will support the community in being strong and serve as a space that will keep community united in the face of gentrification. Reading this makes me think of the grand, old school buildings that we still see in Chicago. As societal/cultural priorities have changed, we see many of these buildings in disrepair and even being knocked down or sold to private entities. What does it mean to build such a grand and beautiful building to house something like a public school? What would happen if we continued to build beautiful houses for public services at the same rate as we did at other times in this city's history? I'm thinking about buildings like the Cultural Center and Senn High School (which some of us visited last week), buildings that were designed to look like actual palaces.

The building of the high school I went to was only five years old when I began, a new CPS school. It is an incredibly beautiful building, there are huge atriums on each floor filling the school with light and overlooking the Chicago River. I really think the building itself had a huge affect on the culture of the school. While Northside College Prep wasn't built in a community with particular need (actually the politics of how the school got built are pretty messed up- not much of a surprise), I think this project is declaring that grand beautiful spaces to house the community's public institutions, has the potential to affect culture, put power into the hands of those who need it and that the design of public institutions really does matter.