Last updated: September 20, 2021
Place
Gladstone School
Photograph by Heritage Consulting Group, courtesy of Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office
Quick Facts
Location:
327 Hazelwood Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennyslvania
Significance:
Architecture, Education
Designation:
Listed in the National Register – Reference number 100006988
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
MANAGED BY:
Private
The Gladstone School, located at 327 Hazelwood Avenue, in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The school was designed by Pittsburgh architect O. M. Topp. The Gladstone School is significant as an example of a school of the Long Progressive Era, a reform movement that prioritized educational improvement. Improvements to school buildings during this era included specialized spaces for subject matter instruction, and increased community engagement. The Gladstone School, with its Collegiate Gothic exterior featuring large window openings for plentiful light and air, and interior of specialized learning spaces and wide corridors for ease of circulation. The school contains two, three-story buildings connected by a pedestrian bridge. The buildings include the c. 1914-1924 building (with a 1965 addition), and the 1926 Annex building. The buildings are connected by a metal-clad contributing 1926 pedestrian bridge at the second floor.
The Gladstone School utilized the Progressive educational system wherein students would learn from both a “homeroom” teacher and other, more specialized personnel who could teach subjects such as music, art, and physical education. Progressives strove to provide students with an educational building set to the highest standards of sanitation, ventilation, and natural lighting. Curriculum reforms were also implemented to provide a more experimental learning-oriented education to youths. To this end, the schools featured auditoriums, shop rooms, libraries, and gymnasiums, along with specialized personnel who could teach students the arts, physical education, and home economics. The original building included 9 classrooms, a kindergarten, a Sewing Room, Cooking Room, Model Bed Room, Model Dining Room, and assorted ancillary spaces.
The school was finished and occupied in the Fall of 1914 and dedicated the next year, servicing elementary and junior high students. In urban areas with dense populations of immigrants, such as Hazelwood, public schools also fulfilled the Reformers’ objective of Americanization. The “social” rooms and after-school adult English language courses offered at Gladstone in the 1920s were part of the “Americanization” process for newly arrived immigrants, accomplishing the Progressives’ objective to integrate the influx of immigrants into American society. Recreation spaces including gymnasiums and pools were becoming an important element of Progressive Schools, as reformers sought to incorporate health, wellness, and physical activity into education. When completed in 1924, the Annex building contained a swimming pool in its basement level, 14 classrooms on two floors above, and one large and one medium gymnasium on the two-story upper floor, along with “playrooms,” and locker rooms.
The school continued to operate and function as a Progressive Era elementary school and junior high school in the 1940s. By the 1950s, Post World War II, the demographics of Hazelwood had changed from southern and eastern European immigrant enclaves to predominantly African-American. Following displacement from Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District urban renewal project which destroyed the commercial heart of the African American community, many settled in Hazelwood. At the same time, many of the while residents were moving to the suburbs, following national demographic and development trends spearheaded by the FHA and VHA programs. To accommodate demographic changes in population and age, in 1958 the entire Gladstone School was converted from an elementary and junior-high school into a high school.
The school was designed by Pittsburgh architect O. M. Topp. The Gladstone School is significant as an example of a school of the Long Progressive Era, a reform movement that prioritized educational improvement. Improvements to school buildings during this era included specialized spaces for subject matter instruction, and increased community engagement. The Gladstone School, with its Collegiate Gothic exterior featuring large window openings for plentiful light and air, and interior of specialized learning spaces and wide corridors for ease of circulation. The school contains two, three-story buildings connected by a pedestrian bridge. The buildings include the c. 1914-1924 building (with a 1965 addition), and the 1926 Annex building. The buildings are connected by a metal-clad contributing 1926 pedestrian bridge at the second floor.
The Gladstone School utilized the Progressive educational system wherein students would learn from both a “homeroom” teacher and other, more specialized personnel who could teach subjects such as music, art, and physical education. Progressives strove to provide students with an educational building set to the highest standards of sanitation, ventilation, and natural lighting. Curriculum reforms were also implemented to provide a more experimental learning-oriented education to youths. To this end, the schools featured auditoriums, shop rooms, libraries, and gymnasiums, along with specialized personnel who could teach students the arts, physical education, and home economics. The original building included 9 classrooms, a kindergarten, a Sewing Room, Cooking Room, Model Bed Room, Model Dining Room, and assorted ancillary spaces.
The school was finished and occupied in the Fall of 1914 and dedicated the next year, servicing elementary and junior high students. In urban areas with dense populations of immigrants, such as Hazelwood, public schools also fulfilled the Reformers’ objective of Americanization. The “social” rooms and after-school adult English language courses offered at Gladstone in the 1920s were part of the “Americanization” process for newly arrived immigrants, accomplishing the Progressives’ objective to integrate the influx of immigrants into American society. Recreation spaces including gymnasiums and pools were becoming an important element of Progressive Schools, as reformers sought to incorporate health, wellness, and physical activity into education. When completed in 1924, the Annex building contained a swimming pool in its basement level, 14 classrooms on two floors above, and one large and one medium gymnasium on the two-story upper floor, along with “playrooms,” and locker rooms.
The school continued to operate and function as a Progressive Era elementary school and junior high school in the 1940s. By the 1950s, Post World War II, the demographics of Hazelwood had changed from southern and eastern European immigrant enclaves to predominantly African-American. Following displacement from Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District urban renewal project which destroyed the commercial heart of the African American community, many settled in Hazelwood. At the same time, many of the while residents were moving to the suburbs, following national demographic and development trends spearheaded by the FHA and VHA programs. To accommodate demographic changes in population and age, in 1958 the entire Gladstone School was converted from an elementary and junior-high school into a high school.