This is why I try to read as much of the New York Times as possible. In the Arts and Design section I found this piece about a school funded in part by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Henderson-Hopkins, as it’s called, aspires to be a campus for the whole area — with a community center, library, auditorium and gym — as well as a hub for economic renewal.
This is what most of East Baltimore looks like, rowhouses and not much else. There is the occasional bodega, the ubiquitous liquor store and a few carry out food joints. Think food desert, inner city and "urban youth".
This is what Paul Ryan was thinking when he made his unfortunate remarks last week. Of course, its about lack of opportunity not lack of drive as Ryan claimed.
This is what the architects of Henderson-Hopkins imagined when they designed the school. Think cleaned up, think trees and think opportunity.
The school is divided into pavilions, or "houses", with both classrooms and open spaces. Each house features a central meeting room, or "commons". The idea is to allow for a shared multi-functional space.
The spaces are generous and airy, with a quirky palette, cheery, not fancy or nuanced. The building is about openness and respect for the neighborhood. Its facade — made of brick-colored precast concrete paneling — riffs on the vernacular Formstone, or fake-rock stucco, applied to surrounding rowhouses.
This Is What Most Of Us Think When We Think Baltimore Thanks to The Wire
The school is in East Baltimore, where much of The Wire was filmed. While the story takes place primarily in the West side, the East side made for better TV because it is starker and more barren.
This is What Henderson-Hopkins Thought When The School Was Designed
The Traditional Relationship Between Urban Universities and Their Neighborhoods
I don't know how many of you are familiar with urban universities. Some, like George Washington and Georgetown in DC and NYU, exist in great neighborhoods. They exist at a remove from the poorer parts of the cities in which they reside.
Others, like Howard in DC and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore exist right next to poor neighborhoods. They still seem to exist at a remove from those neighborhoods. Students are warned not to venture too far off campus and to be ever vigilant of "threats".
This is from the Washington Post:
The renowned Johns Hopkins University medical campus looms over East Baltimore like a fortress on a hill. On its northern edge lies a humble neighborhood of rowhouses weathered by decades of crime, poverty and decay.
The research powerhouse in health sciences was long seen as indifferent to the social ills festering on its doorstep, or as powerless to cure them. That view echoes in cities across the country where universities thrive next to slums.
The Center for Education Reform indicates that something like 50 charter schools with close university partnerships exist in the US. Two examples are UPenn's
Penn Alexander and Howard's
Middle School of Math and Science.
“It’s risky,” acknowledged Susan H. Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, which recently put its name on a New York public school. “With heightened accountability, you are on the line for student achievement. But if every university in an urban setting did this, it would be a huge boost. We’re neighbors, and we have an obligation.”
The Downside of Urban Renewal
Of course, to create something new in a place where something old already exists, you have to break apart that something old. In the case of urban renewal, that means displacing residents, homeowner and renter alike.
There are plenty of examples from earlier decades about re-imagining major cities. In many cases, neighborhoods were dismantled and never quite put back together again. In some cases, most notably Greenwich Village, residents successfully fought off such changes.
(The link takes you to a discussion of the history of New York City)
In the case of Henderson-Hopkins, dozens of acres needed to be cleared and 742 families needed to be relocated. It seems to me that this project took steps not to repeat past mistakes of urban renewal. Dislocated residents got subsidized housing in other parts of the city. Many returned to the development once it was completed.
The redevelopment goal is for one-third of housing in the neighborhood to be permanently set aside for low-income residents. Anybody who moved out can also move back, if they choose. “Literally one-for-one replacement."
-- Christopher Shea, president of East Baltimore Development Inc., the nonprofit organization overseeing the development in the NYT article
And then there is the question of who is eligible to attend Henderson-Hopkins. There is a limited number of students who can be enrolled. This leaves others, including some right on the edge of the redevelopment zone, to the uncertainties of the Baltimore city school system. There are many questions left to be answered about how this will work.
I will close with the final line from the New York Times article ...
To be successful, architecture depends on what happens in and around it.
So does a neighborhood.