{"id":352,"date":"2013-12-08T19:24:15","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T01:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decidedlygrim.net\/forlorn\/?p=352"},"modified":"2014-03-21T19:05:56","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T00:05:56","slug":"the-lions-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decidedlygrim.net\/forlorn\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"The Lion’s School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Date of Visit: \u00a0July 15, 2012<\/p>\n

Abandoned schools are always tremendously sad to me. \u00a0Schools are the foundations of a neighborhood; mighty structures that were built to inspire, with classical architecture and, often, rich ornamentation. \u00a0 Schools are meant to persevere, to define a neighborhood, to inspire rivalries with other schools. \u00a0Generation after generation should pass through the doors of a school, sit in its creaky chairs, carve their initials in its desks, inhale its chalk dust, be humiliated in its locker rooms, suffer dodgeball injuries in its gymnasium, grow faint with anxiety waiting for its stage curtain to open, tape pictures of heroes to locker walls. \u00a0Schools are built to last, they are built to protect. \u00a0It’s no wonder that school buildings often serve as fallout or tornado shelters. \u00a0They are an indispensable heart (brain?) of a community, and it’s hard to believe they could ever close.<\/p>\n

But they do close. \u00a0And in the last twenty years, they’ve been closing with ever-increasing frequency. \u00a0The city of Chicago just closed over 50 schools this year. \u00a0All over the rust belt, a combination of population loss in former industrial and manufacturing meccas and the rise of privatized for-profit charter schools have meant that many neighborhood icons are ringing the school bells for the last time and decaying in silence.<\/p>\n

Of all the buildings I’ve explored, schools always seem the most wasteful. \u00a0Not just because the buildings are immense and beautiful, but also because the interiors are often so stunning. \u00a0The woodwork of the inbuilt cabinets and desks is like nothing you would ever see constructed today. \u00a0I find myself thinking, “If only I could have a cabinet like this in my house.” \u00a0 And I also find myself thinking… how can they not reuse this? \u00a0How can they just let all of this beauty, all of this\u00a0valuable\u00a0<\/em>beauty, just decay and become vandalized and destroyed?<\/p>\n

And it’s not just the wooden furniture and cabinets that is a waste. \u00a0So many supplies are left behind. \u00a0I have seen libraries still stocked with books, gymnasiums filled with desks and textbooks, piles of chairs, piles of projectors, rooms full of paper and pencils and pens and staplers and chalk. \u00a0So many things that you’d think they could have sent to another school? \u00a0Or given away to charities? \u00a0So many things that could have found a use but are instead wasting away in the moldy silence.<\/p>\n

This particular school (possibly the most beautiful I’ve seen) was built in 1913; it closed in 2006; and it’s currently being vandalized into ugliness. \u00a0I was there before it started really getting hit by vandals, but it’s now just shell of what it was when I saw it in July, 2012. \u00a0And when I saw it, it was just a shell of what it once was when it was in use. \u00a0It’s a particularly tragic loss.<\/p>\n

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