a m b e r n . wi le y
The Dunbar High School Dilemma
Architecture, Power, and African American Cultural Heritage
To us, tearing down Dunbar High School is like somebody trying to tear down the Washington Monument
or the Capitol.
—­Dr. Henry S. Robinson,
D.C. City Council Member, 1974
What a paradox and contradiction it would be today,
if on the projected Bicentennial tours of historic sites
in Washington dealing with black history, a visitor would ask, “Where is the Dunbar High School,”
and be told, “Oh! That’s been torn down at the urging of Afro-­Americans themselves, the modern Afro-­
American really does not care anything about his
history.”
—­W. Montague Cobb,
NAACP National President, 1976
I don’t know how people can sit down and talk about
preserving mortar and brick when the needs of the
students are staring them in the face.
—­Phyllis R. Beckwith, principal,
Dunbar High School, 1977
For three years in the mid-­1970s a highly contested and public debate transpired in Washing­
ton, D.C., that centered on the impeding demolition of the vacant 1916 building that formerly
housed Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
Dunbar was the institutional successor of the
Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, the
first public high school established for blacks in
the nation. Advocates for demolition, including
the school’s administration, many city officials,
and members of the Board of Education, were
ada­mant that they had in mind the best interests
of students. In lieu of a worn-­down structure, students would enjoy a highly innovative and completely modernized school plant. Ad­dition­a lly,
students would gain a home football field where
the 1916 building once stood. Students and administrators considered the field a much-­needed
addition to school grounds, as the Dunbar athletics program was garnering nationwide recognition. Demolition opponents—­preservationists,
local historians, and many alumni—­countered
by arguing that keeping the historic Dunbar
High School would benefit students. Preservation of the building would provide students with
a physical reminder of the rich history of their
school, an example of black academic excellence
in Jim Crow America.
The debate surrounding the demolition of
the building revealed a complex shift in black
political empowerment that was embodied in a
new attitude toward the built environment. The
reappropriation of African American history
and culture, part and parcel of the Black Power
movement, was exemplified by a new vision for
the future based on citizen participation, autonomous neighborhoods, and avant-­garde solutions
to the problems that plagued black communities
in cities. These solutions included the creation
of large-­scale, modern, urban high schools that
were meant not only to educate but also to stimulate stagnant or declining black urban centers.1
How did the African American community in
Washington deal with preservation, talk about its
implications, and imagine it working to transform
negative opinions about a school that was previously a symbol of black educational excellence?
95
This research examines the idea of an educational landmark, loss of physical institutional
memory, and arguments against preserving the
1916 building because it embodied the taint of
classism and colorism in the African American
community. The conversation in Washington
around the demolition of the 1916 Dunbar school
plant reveals how African Americans in a once
exceptionally successful urban community envisioned their history and discrimination through
a built environment created in tandem with segregation.2 It also highlights what was at stake
in this particular preservation battle and how
advocates of demolition believed a new building
would address the needs of an economically depressed urban community.
For critics of perceived colorism in Washing­
ton, the 1916 Dunbar school building was a symbol of an era of exclusionary practices within
the African American community.3 This group
included politicians, city administrators, and
alumni of both Dunbar and Armstrong Manual
Training high schools. The school building
served as a painful and demoralizing reminder
of segregation and was no longer necessary in a
postsegregation society.4 Desegregation, changes
in educational policy and pedagogy (such as the
emergence of the open-­plan school), the 1968
riots, subsequent recovery efforts, and a growing
consciousness of cultural empowerment shaped
the design concept for a new building. Community leaders recognized that the new Dunbar,
along with the Shaw Junior High, could leverage
resident support of Great Society urban renewal
programs to aid their struggling neighborhood.
The two buildings—­old and new Dunbar—­
revealed different ideas about what the African
American built environment should embody.
These ideas were directly tied to the desegregation of the school system, the introduction of
Home Rule to Washington in 1974, and a charged
political atmosphere that pitted old guard Washington against new. The argument for preserving old Dunbar was reflective of a larger political
trend in the African American community and in
Washing­ton, a generational shift that resulted in
new representations of “blackness.” It was a battle for the representation of what black Washing-
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ton was—­considered elitist and exclusionary—­
and what it could be—­avant-­garde, powerful, and
egalitarian.
The Formative Years of Black Education
in the Nation’s Capital
The development of a black public sphere, aided
by the expansion of the federal government in
the late nineteenth century, created the unique
environment for the foundation of Dunbar High
School. One-­t hird of the Washington population in 1870 consisted of black residents, and a
portion of these residents traveled to the city as
contraband during the Civil War.5 Newly emancipated migrants also arrived from the Deep South,
making the population swell. Additionally, longtime established free black families such as the
Wormleys, Syphaxes, and Cooks, self-­defined as
the black aristocracy, created and sustained social
and educational institutions in Washington.6 The
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Land (commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bu­
reau) guaranteed federal support and an infrastructure of social, economic, and educational
advancement for newly freed slaves; however,
backlash against Reconstruction hindered this
process. The dissolution of the bureau in 1871,
coupled with the passage of Jim Crow laws only
made matters worse across the nation.
The social makeup of the black population in
the nation’s capital was as varied as the distribution of the residences across Washington. Blacks
were dispersed throughout the city, with many
of the poorest residents living in alley dwellings.
These alley residents, as well as domestic female
workers, lived at the margins of Washington’s
African American social landscape. Their participation in the service industry dictated that
they led double lives in the black and white public
spheres of the city.7
Washington, however, was the “undisputed
center of American Negro civilization” in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8
Despite the restrictive nature of Jim Crow laws,
black Washington continued to be the exception for those who sought opportunity for social
advancement. The most influential community
formed around the U Street commercial corri-
dor, a result of discrimination against blacks in
the downtown retail center. The corridor was anchored to the north by Howard University (1867)
and to the east by LeDroit Park, a neighborhood
that was home to Washington’s black intelligentsia of the early twentieth century.9 M Street
School, the predecessor to Dunbar High School,
became an important fixture in this diverse social, economic, and residential landscape when
the building was erected in 1891 less than a mile
southeast of Howard University, at the intersection of M Street and New York Avenue, N.W.
Washington was unique in its early establishment of dual, segregated public school systems
as dictated by federal law.10 Radical Republicans
such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner
hoped the city would act as a model for the rest
of the country. In 1862, the U.S. Congress abolished slavery in the nation’s capital through
the passage of the Compensated Emancipation
Act. Additional federal legislation in May and
July of the same year called for the creation of
public schools for African Americans.11 Mayor
Richard Wallach’s dedication to the expansion
of the public school system and the creation of
innovative schoolhouses for all students regardless of race reinforced his motto, “Schools for
all, good enough for the richest, cheap enough
for the poorest.”12 This mentality was reflective
of the common school movement, popularized
by Horace Mann in the pre–Civil War era, that
emphasized compulsory education as a means
toward morality and character building regardless of social status.13
Wallach secured funding in 1862 for the
construction of new school buildings, seven of
which were designed by Adolph Cluss, the German architect who would later go on to design
the Smith­sonian Institution’s Arts and Industries Building and other substantial structures
throughout the city. Wallach intended the school
buildings, whether built for African American or white students, to be examples of ideal
urban multi­c lassroom schoolhouses.14 Accordingly, Thaddeus Stevens School (1868) and the
Charles Sumner School (1872), the former built
by Alexander Pannell and the latter designed by
Cluss, represented the forefront in design for
primary-­school education and were meant to serve
the African American community.
The Preparatory High School for Colored
Youth, the first municipally funded public high
school in the nation for blacks and the precursor to Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, was
founded in 1870 by the Board of Trustees of
Colored Schools of Washington and Georgetown,
president William Syphax and secretary William
H. A. Wormley.15 For the duration of the first
school year, forty-­five students met in the basement of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church
at Fifteenth and R streets, N.W. The size of the
student body was extraordinary during a period
when most American youth, regardless of race
or ethnicity, did not attend high school.16 The
school moved numerous times during the next
twenty-­one years, before it finally settled at the
intersection of M Street and New York Avenue,
N.W., where it was housed for twenty-­five years,
from 1891 to 1916.17
The construction of a building to house the
Preparatory High School for Colored Youth was
a great achievement for the African American
community, particularly after the destabilizing
location changes of the early years. The Prepara­
tory High School for Colored Youth had previously
been hosted in educational facilities dedicated
to primary education, including the Stevens and
Sumner schools. Congress’s $112,000 appropriation helped build a bigger school to accommodate the needs of secondary-­school education.
The institution was renamed the M Street School
in 1891 to reflect its new location (Figure 1).18 The
three-­story M Street School, considerably larger
and more elaborate than a primary school, was
built primarily of red brick, the mass of which
was divided into one grand central pavilion, with
two flanking wings that accommodated separate
boys’ and girls’ entrances (Figure 2).
In the late nineteenth century, the architectural plans of public high school buildings did
not vary greatly; instead, the main design differences between schools were the details of the
façade. As architectural historian Dale Allen
Gyure noted, “For most of the nineteenth century, creating a school building was a rather
straight­forward task. Room and window sizes
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97
Figure 1. Sanborn Map
of M Street School site
1903–04. The map
illustrates the prominent
location of the school
at the intersection of
M Street and New
York Avenue, N.W., a
major thoroughfare in
Washington. Courtesy
Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C. Public
Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
were relatively standardized.”19 That was the case
at the M Street School; its programmatic layout
was typical of secondary schools at the time. Stan­
dardized classrooms lacked functional distinction except for the auditorium and the cafeteria.
Decorated in the widely popular Roman­esque Revival style, the front elevation used Phila­del­phia
pressed brick, sandstone, and wood ornament,
in addition to architectural details such as belt
coursing, decorative terra cotta, semicircular
open and blind arches, and corbelled brick. The
central pavilion and flanking wings of the school
were treated with classically inspired decorative
motifs. The doorways were crowned with pediments and punctuated on each side by paired
composite pilasters.20
Figure 2. M Street
School. Office of the
Building Inspector, U.S.
Corps of Engineers,
architects; 1890–91,
altered. Courtesy
Washington D.C. Public
Library, Washingtoniana
Division.
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In 1916 a new building was erected in response to the growing student body of the
M Street School (Figure 3). This building was
constructed in accordance with larger trends in
pedagogy and architectural design occurring
during the Progressive Era. The design epitomized societal and educational reforms that
were concerned with expanding curriculum
and providing a variety of experiences for the
high school student. This included attention to
lighting, ventilation, increased differentiation
between space allotted to students and teachers,
and economy in plan. The double-­loaded corridor
arrangement of primary and secondary schools
during this time led to the term “egg crate” used
by later critics of the simple and efficient layouts;
however, school design began to include rooms
built for specific purposes related to changes in
curriculum and pedagogy—­science laboratories,
dressing rooms for physical education, and art
and music rooms.21 As historian Gyure asserted,
“the modern high school building had been established” during the Progressive Era.22
Congress appropriated $500,000 and directed municipal architect Snowden Ashford to
design the new building of brick and concrete.
From 1909 to 1921, Ashford supervised the design of public buildings in Washington, including the segregated white Central High School
(1916) and Eastern High School (1923).23 Notably
the congressional appropriation for Central High
School was $1.2 million—­more than twice that
offered for the new M Street School.24 Despite the
major difference in construction budget, Ashford
designed a regal, well-­appointed new building for
African American students, a reflection of his
commitment to quality design in the face of racial
segregation. One critic later noted that because of
Ashford “Washington’s black schools were separate but truly equal to their white counterparts.”25
The three-­story building employed Tudor references with a running parapet along the roof
and a central fortified tower on the façade. Large
windows and a ventilation system, typical in new
high schools, reflected growing concerns about
health in educational design during the early
twentieth century.26
In other ways, the well-­equipped facility
showed the influence of new design norms. De­
spite the rigid double-­loaded corridor plan, the
school was highly sophisticated in accommodating new curricular needs and a diversity of functions.27 According to an article published in The
Crisis, innovations included a 1,500-­seat auditorium “with provision made for presenting motion pictures,” a pipe organ, a swimming pool,
a cafeteria, a library, gymnasiums “with dressing rooms furnished with shower baths” for boys
and girls, a banking department for business
classes, home economics classrooms supplied
within “modern dining and living room furniture” for instruction, a study hall, a rifle range,
and a greenhouse.28 On January 17, 1916, the new
M Street High School, located at First Street between N Street and O Street, N.W., was renamed
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in honor of
the deceased poet who had ties to the LeDroit
Park neighborhood near the school.29
Throughout the period of legal segregation,
Dunbar High School flourished, upholding
the high tradition of the M Street High School,
despite continuous overcrowding. Student academic success was born out of racial discrimination: highly educated black teachers, some of
whom held doctorates, were denied employment
at other educational institutions. Their mis­
fortune was a blessing for students who were
guaranteed a first-­rate education, with a rigorous college preparatory curricu­lum. The school
sent graduates to prominent colleges, including
Howard, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Antioch, Radcliffe, Mount Holyoke, Smith,
Harvard, Vassar, and Yale.30 While Dunbar had
initially offered a technical and business curriculum, it later developed as a classical academic school, with a strong focus on Romance
languages and Latin, as well as core classes
such as mathematics and science. Dunbar was
the prime example for black educational excellence during segregation; however, students at
segregated black schools in other cities, such as
Charles Sumner High School in Kansas City,
Kansas, and Frederick Douglass High School
in Baltimore, Maryland, also flourished because
of the limited employment opportunities for
highly qualified black educators.31
Perceptions of Elitism and Exclusion at Dunbar
By the early twentieth century black families from
all over the United States sent their children to
study in Washington. The places were as varied as
Brooklyn, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Dayton, Ohio; Muskogee, Oklahoma; Durham,
North Carolina; Beaufort, South Carolina; Jack­
son, Mississippi; and Oakland, California. They
were drawn by the reputation of the black public
schools, and Dunbar in particular, the leading
college preparatory school for African American
students.32 The concentration of such a talented
group of individuals later fostered perceptions
of the school as elitist, a reputation that would
work against preserving the 1916 building.
Some of the better-­k nown graduates include
Benjamin O. Davis, the first black general in the
United States Army, and Charles Drew, innovator in blood plasma research. Suffragist Mary
Church Terrell, historian Carter G. Woodson,
and educator Anna Julia Cooper, one of the first
black women to receive a doctorate, all taught at
M Street School/Dunbar High School. Cooper
also served as principal of the M Street School
from 1902 to 1906.
Dunbar’s history is closely linked to Arm­
strong Manual Training High School, which was
founded in 1902 as a technical training school
based on the principles of Booker T. Washington
Figure 3. Paul Laurence
Dunbar High School.
Snowden Ashford,
architect; 1916,
demolished 1977. Paul
Laurence Dunbar High
School Open House
(April 1979), 4. Courtesy
Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C. Public
Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
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99
(Figure 4). The fierce rivalry between Dunbar
and Armstrong played out academically as well
as in extracurricular activities such as the cadet
corps drills and sporting events. This rivalry reflected the national debate between W. E. B. Du
Bois and Booker T. Washington about African
American social and political empowerment.33
Dunbar followed the Du Boisian mode of classical educational training, developing the “Tal­
ented Tenth” of the African American population, while Armstrong followed more closely
Washington’s industrial-­based approach toward
self-­sufficiency. Despite different educational
philosophies both schools thrived during segregation and produced talented graduates who
were successful in their respective fields.34 This
is because Dunbar and Armstrong drew from
the same pool of educational capital in the
city. For example, Carter G. Woodson served
as principal of Armstrong High School, as did
Garnet C. Wilkinson, who also served as principal of Dunbar. Wilkinson would later become
first assistant superintendent in charge of the
colored schools in Washington.
Figure 4. Dunbar High
School (middle) in
relation to Armstrong
High School (white
building in middle right).
The main entrance of
Armstrong faced away
from Dunbar, so the
portal seen in this view
is considered secondary.
Liber Anni 1965. Courtesy
Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C. Public
Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
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The social hierarchy informed by perceived
intraracial colorism is another reason for the intense rivalry between the two schools.35 Scholar
Audrey Elisa Kerr compiled and recorded impressions from alumni of both institutions about this
phenomenon. She also interviewed Washington
and Baltimore residents, who shared tales of self-­
segregation within the black community based
on skin complexion.36 The resulting social stratifications were manifest in churches, schools, jobs
(particularly federal government positions), and
social clubs.
Kerr chronicled accounts about blacks of
lighter skin tones attending Dunbar and later
various colleges, while blacks of darker hues attended Armstrong, specialized in trades, and
were later employed as mechanics, electrician and bricklayer assistants, dressmakers,
and cooks.37 Inter­v iewees indicated that well-­
connected blacks of lighter skin tones, from
families that were of high social stature (either
old Washington families or those of extreme
wealth), constituted the majority of the Dunbar
student body.
Rumors of the use of colorism to exclude blacks
of lower social classes at Dunbar may have persisted for decades, but James E. Harrison of
Catholic University documented socioeconomic
diversity in the Dunbar student population in
research that he conducted during the 1940s.
The examples in the study were perhaps atypical since they were based on a small pool of
students who were noted for behavioral problems. Harrison was able to glean information
about students’ home life by using records from
Washington public schools. He noted that “serious congestion was reported in the homes of
a number of the boys . . . one such home was
an apartment of three rooms in which a family
of seven lived. . . . Another family of three persons occupied one small room . . . there were no
facilities in the room for water, heat or light.”38
On the other end of the spectrum was “one case
[where] a family of four was living in a house that
was found to be especially neat, clean and well
ordered . . . in another case, a family of seven persons lived in a quiet residential neighborhood,
in a three-­story brick house of ten rooms, with
many modern improvements and comfortably
furnished.”39
Harrison’s observations illuminated a wider
range of living conditions for these particular
students than allowed by the Dunbar stereotype.
Harrison also found that parents’ occupations
were listed as both skilled and unskilled. While
Harrison attempted to explain behavior as a result of home conditions, he also did justice to
the argument that Dunbar students were not
all socially and economically elite. Conservative
economist and scholar Thomas Sowell, critic of
the elitist stereotype associated with Dunbar,
has also pointed to signs of diversity through a
multitude of sources such as firsthand alumni
accounts and yearbook pictures. He intended to
debunk what he considered an unfair portrayal
of working-­class families to whom quality education was of utmost importance. 40 While information gathered over the years has challenged
the stereotype of Dunbar students as the children of only wealthy elites, the stigma of that
perception, whether folklore or fact, worked in
favor of demolition.
Desegregation and the Perceived
Decline of Dunbar
Desegregation and a population shift reflective of
the Second Great Migration played a major role
in the perceived decline of Dunbar as a leading
educational institution. 41 Desegregation did not
change the racial demographic of Dunbar’s students, due in part to a new Board of Education rule
that prohibited students from attending schools
outside their neighborhood residential boundaries. However, socioeconomic status did change
radically. Students who lived near Dunbar, a fraction of the school’s student body before desegregation, began attending Dunbar after 1954 in increasing numbers because of newly established
neighborhood school boundaries. Desegregation
ended the era of Dunbar acting as the national
magnet school for African Americans. The social change within Dunbar was more drastic
than its physical transformation as the school’s
academic prestige began to diminish.
Before Brown v. the Board of Education, Wash­
ing­ton’s public school system operated like others across the nation, with separate facilities and
resources for black and white students. Although
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts proposed that Congress integrate Washington’s
public schools in 1870, the school system of the
nation’s capital remained segregated until the
landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954.
The Bolling v. Sharpe case, a companion to Brown
v. the Board of Education, dealt specifically with
segregation in Washington as distinct from the
states. Since the city was not subject to the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
segregation in Washington was ruled unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment because
of the due process clause. The plaintiffs, black
students who attempted to attend and integrate
John Philip Sousa Junior High, were discriminated against because of race and therefore denied their right to due process.
The methods used to integrate schools were
determined on a case-­by-­case basis after the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in all states and Washington. Walter
Tobriner, president of the Board of Education from
1957 to 1961 considered Washington a “shining
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
101
example” of integration for the rest of the United
States. 42 In Washington, as in other American
cities, desegregation did not change the racial
makeup of majority-­black schools. Instead, many
majority-­white schools turned over to majority-­
black student populations after white parents
moved and pulled their children out of schools to
avoid participating in integration. 43
The Board of Education in Washington maintained the status quo in neighborhoods by fashioning statements and policies that sounded progressive but had the opposite effect. For example,
before reestablishing school boundaries based
on place of residence and proximity to schools,
the Board mandated “Attendance of pupils residing in school boundaries . . . shall not be permitted at schools located beyond such boundaries,
except for the most necessitous reasons or for the
public convenience, and in no event for reasons
related to the racial character of the school within
the boundaries in which the pupil resides” [emphasis added]. 44 This stipulation meant that busing
children to facilitate integration was not an option and that school demographics would reflect
residential demographics.
Exceptions were made. Students already attending schools outside their newly designated
school zones were permitted to continue. The
goal was “to provide stability, continuity, and security in the educational experiences” for those
students during the transition. 45 Washington
had become increasingly segregated due to federal housing policies enacted through the Alley
Dwelling Acts of 1914 and 1934, and the District
of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945. These
acts of Congress created the Alley Dwelling Authority (later the National Capital Housing Authority) and the Redevelopment Land Agency,
which eliminated the preexisting, although somewhat hidden, racial heterogeneity of Washington
by removing alley dwellings in the city and consolidating large populations of black Washingtonians in public housing.46 De facto segregation in
the public school system was perpetuated in areas
that were increasingly white or black in population in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of federal
housing policies. This trend persisted over the
decades, resulting in a virtually all black Wash-
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ington public school system as whites moved to
the suburbs of Maryland in record numbers.
The Board of Education viewed the professed
racial integration of Dunbar and other schools
in the city as a potentially instructive example of
success because of their location in the nation’s
capital. In an undated speech on de­segregation,
Tobriner optimistically stated that there would
be a “relative ease of transition in Washington”
due to a “fairly recent history of a progressive
crumbling of racial barriers.” He also cited pressure from the president, who wanted Washing­
ton to be a model for integration that the rest
of the country should follow, and the fact that
“Washington was governed by appointed rather
than elective personnel who otherwise would
have tried to skirt around the issue.”47 The matter of Washington’s political appointment procedures spoke to a clear paradox of the city’s
government. Tobriner maintained that local
issues such as integration were treated with a
fair hand because city officials did not have to
worry about upsetting or potentially losing their
constituency. Ironically, he also highlighted the
disenfranchised status of Washington residents.
School desegregation and large-­scale migration of blacks from the south to the north during
and after World War II soon exacerbated de facto
residential racial and economic segregation in
major cities. With middle class whites and blacks
fleeing cities, the people and places that were
deserted suffered from concentrated poverty. 48
Schools were particularly in need of resources.
Middle and upper class whites who stayed in the
city began to rely heavily on private education for
their children, solidifying the polarized nature of
urban education. 49
Taken together, academic changes at Dunbar
and treatment of recent southern migrants offer
an example of how desegregation and migration
became a compounded problem for urban black
schools that previously thrived under segregation. Since the Washington school system was
under great pressure to integrate quickly, students who had attended Dunbar before 1954 and
were drawn there for its academic rigor either
stayed until graduation or were sent to schools
elsewhere.50 The major turnover in the economic
demographic of the student body explains later
claims by alumni supporting the preservation effort of the 1916 building. New students seemed
disconnected to Dunbar’s past and had little regard for the school or its facilities. The principal
of Dunbar at the time of desegregation, Charles
Lofton, stated that the real reason behind the
drop in the elite status of the school was the
fact that the majority of new students attending
Dunbar were from “the Deep South” and “ill-­
prepared to keep up with local students.”51 Lofton
placed the blame for poor academic performance squarely on new students who were part
of Washington’s black migrant population from
southern states. During the 1950s the school
slipped from high rankings and association with
the African American upper middle class.52
In addition to the changing socioeconomic
status of students at Dunbar, active integration of
the Washington school system ultimately failed.
By 1967, educational scholar A. Harry Passow
stated that “devices that might further desegregation in other cities are now largely irrelevant in
Washington,” referring to methods such as busing and freedom of choice plans.53 Many white
residents moved into parts of northern Virginia
and Montgomery County, Maryland, while upwardly mobile black residents moved to upper
northwest Washington and Prince George’s
County, Maryland, exacerbating the issue of residential segregation in Washington. Census records indicate that black flight occurred as early
as the 1950s and continued steadily through
1980 (Figure 5).54 The Washington public school
system increasingly served black students with
limited economic means and opportunity during
the 1970s.
Education, Urban Renewal, and Urban Crisis
In black urban communities, progressively impoverished in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
the loss of a solid tax base and industrial jobs
affected funding for urban schools. Federal
programs, including the Model Cities Program,
proliferated under Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great
Society initiative. They were designed to increase
aid in neighborhoods that witnessed an eroding
tax base and other effects of segregation, de­
industrialization, and suburbanization.55 Twenty
years after Brown v. Board of Education, psychologists and historians wondered if institutions set
up to educate black youth could also help eradicate social problems that black youth faced. In essence, they advocated that education become the
“panacea of the ills of a ‘divided’ society” through
compensatory education and new pedagogy.56
In this period of urban crisis, African Ameri­
cans faced competing proposals for change. On
the one hand, educators proposed opening the
learning process through new approaches to
pedagogy and curriculum. On the other, many
high schools, particularly those serving African
American neighborhoods, became more fortified and introverted. Some educators and policy
makers turned to school reform, based on the
idea that education was the key to a more successful future, while others proposed to cure
the problems of the urban ghetto by abandoning
desegregation and favoring a more Afrocentric
approach to curriculum and pedagogy. Major
shifts occurred in administration, community
organizing, and identity politics, as well as the
physical designs of schools themselves. Racial
considerations were tantamount in decisions regarding urban education policy. David K. Cohen
of the Harvard Graduate School of Education
poignantly stated in 1969: “Urban education is
nothing more or less than a series of profound
convulsions over the role which race will play in
the organization of schools, and, indeed, in the
organization of urban life generally.”57
Schools were considered tools for renewal in
downtown districts by the early 1960s. In New
York City, for example, the Educational Facilities
Laboratories (EFL), a committee formed by the
American Institute of Architects, urged the school
board to consider creating schools as combined
public and private ventures and collaborating
with the housing authority and trade unions.58
Further, the EFL suggested that the school board
rent high-­rise commercial and residential space
attached to the school in order to pay down the
construction loan.59
Two early examples of federal and local urban
renewal funds used to build neighborhood schools
are in New Haven, Connecticut: Harry A. Conte
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
103
Figure 5. Map of
Washington, D.C.,
metropolitan area
showing percentage
of African-American
population by census
tracts for 1940, 1960,
1970, and 1980. Note
the east/west divide
of racial residential
segregation, as well as
the expanding African
American suburbs of
Prince George’s County,
Maryland. The white
dot in the center of the
map is the Dunbar High
School site. “Census
Tracts—Washington,
D.C., Metropolitan
Area.” Map. Social
Explorer Professional.
Social Explorer, 2011.
School and Community Center (1963) and the
Richard C. Lee High School (1966). Under the
direction of Mayor Richard C. Lee, New Haven’s
overly ambitious and shortsighted urban renewal
plans caused extensive demolition and drastically altered the way the city was experienced.60
The new Conte School (kindergarten through
eighth grade) was meant to revive the Wooster
104
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
Square area, a working-­c lass Italian neighborhood where numerous black families settled
after World War II. The Conte School, designed
with a decentralized campus plan, embraced
suburban spatial ideals. The school was a concrete shell with glass walls “to give it a stronger-­
looking exterior.”61 Richard C. Lee High School
was designed with an open plan and organized
the student body in groupings of four “sub-­
schools” to foster a sense of community within
the school itself.62
The “strong exterior” aesthetic adopted by
both the Conte School and Richard C. Lee High
School anticipated debates about design that
were prompted by the riots of the mid-­to-­late
1960s. One political historian has estimated that
“in the first nine months of 1967 alone, more
than 160 riots occurred.”63 Cities affected by the
rioting included Detroit, Watts, Newark, Buffalo,
Atlanta, Philadelphia, and, in 1968, Washington.
The impact of the riots created tension within the
black community. Conservative black politicians
decried the actions taken, while radicals stood
behind the idea that rioting spurred significant
political change, as important as voting and possibly even more effective in outcome. Although
numerous, deadly, destructive, costly, and controversial, it is clear that the riots helped blacks
win an authoritative voice in the urban renewal
process: legislators realized that blacks needed to
be included in the decision-­making coalition concerning the rebuilding of their neighborhoods
and their schools.
After the riots, many city officials and community organizers with sizeable disenfranchised
black populations increasingly saw education
and educational facilities as a part of urban renewal. Sometimes under the aegis of the Model
Cities program, urban renewal plans of the late
1960s involved the creation of schools and housing. Various city entities such as redevelopment
authorities and community organizations also
wanted to build schools to harness public funds
and use the power of eminent domain to benefit
black neighborhoods.64 All too often, the fortified nature of new high school design reflected
a post-­r iot anxiety. The exterior of Douglass
High School (1968) in Atlanta, University City
(1971) and William Penn (1974) high schools in
Philadelphia, and Woodson (1972) and the new
Dunbar high school in Washington were direct
commentaries on the nature of life on the street
and growing fear of the potential violence of
urban youth.
In design and in the decision-­making process these projects harken back to the 1963 New
Haven urban renewal project in the Wooster
Square neighborhood, which centered on the construction of the Harry A. Conte School and Com­
munity Center. In other cities, the role of public
schools in urban renewal was greatly expanded
as communities began to hold advocates and officials to a higher level of accountability.
New Directions in Design
In 1963, the Architectural Forum praised the development of new schools that, unlike their predecessors, resembled “fortresses of the mind,
rather than penitentiaries of the spirit.”65 The
suggestion to the reader, whether architect,
edu­cator, administrator, or city official, was that
the design of these new buildings must create
grand, strong, and awe-­inspiring environments
for learning. The design should also be protective of each student without being oppressive
or alienating. These different ideals created an
architectural dilemma for major cities that were
experiencing loss of residents to the suburbs,
concurrent with the consolidation of racial and
poverty-­stricken communities. Schools needed
to be monuments to education, while also functioning as anchors in the community life of their
neighborhoods.
The new school buildings described in the
journal did not adhere to the classicizing vocabularies of the early twentieth-­century school building. Previously, decorative programs included
motifs that embodied the democratic aspiration
of compulsory education in the United States.
How­ever, the new schools represented interest
in creating strong cultural symbols through
massive monumentality and maximizing optimum interior flexibility. Cutting-­edge architectural firms with significant experience in school
design, such as McLeod, Ferrara, & Ensign,
began working in urban settings that were vastly
different from the suburban ones to which they
had grown accustomed in the postwar boom
of school construction. Leading firms such as
Mitchell/Giurgola and H2L2 in Philadelphia,
as well as Aeck Associates in Atlanta, known
for large-­scale innovative civic and commercial
work in center city projects, set their sights on the
major educational commissions in which cities
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
105
Figure 6. Howard D.
Woodson High School.
McLeod, Ferrara, &
Ensign, architects;
1965–72, demolished
2008. Reprinted with
permission of the
Washington D.C. Public
Library, Star Collection,
copyright Washington
Post.
106
| invested heavily. These architects collaborated
with new clientele and experimented within new
urban settings.
The school designs reflect historian Michael
Clapper’s assertion that “schools transcend their
buildings, affecting neighborhoods in invisible
ways, from the messages communicated by the
direction children are walking to school to obviously manipulated catchment areas.”66 A 1964
publication, discussing the relationship between
school construction and urban renewal, stated,
“among the generally small-­scale structures in
a residential area the schoolhouse can become
the ‘neighborhood capital’—­the significant architectural element [original emphasis].”67 The
principles governing site selection, flexibility,
openness, and durability of these designs were
intended not only to create innovative centers of
learning but also to construct a conscious new
monumentality that emphasized the visibility of
an otherwise marginalized population.
Not everyone agreed about design and planning strategy. Various protagonists used school
design to push forward political agendas that
were not always congruent. Community activists, concerned with cultural empowerment,
wanted better education facilities and a strong
B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
architectural statement in their neighborhoods.
Architects and planners wanted to push the limits of architectural design, to open a dialogue, and
to experiment with new materials and spatial organization, as well as to spur urban renewal and
revitalization. They worked with the notion that
they were on the front line in a battle zone for the
soul of the city. Architectural Forum declared in
1963, “the war of architecture has hardly been
won in our elder cities’ school districts, but only
begun.”68 City officials, with a mind toward reinforcing segregation, exploited de facto housing
patterns by building new schools within established racially uniform neighborhoods. Policy-­
minded educators and educational consultants
wanted to match the physical space of schools with
new ideas of team teaching based on open plans.
All these concerns combined with a growing fear
of unrest in a post-­riot urban setting. The conclusion was that the nation’s capital and other cities
needed large-­scale and fortified school designs to
denote a “secured” environment. The design for
the new Dunbar High School was born of these
national trends in educational architecture.
The creation of Howard D. Woodson High
School in the northeast quadrant of Washington
also played a major role in the design proposal
for a new Dunbar. Designed by the firm McLeod,
Ferrara & Ensign, Woodson High School had
been in construction since the mid-­1960s; it finally opened in fall 1972—­the first high-­rise, fully
modernized school in the city (Fig­ure 6). The
high-­rise design is significant since Washing­ton
was subject to stringent zoning height restrictions and the surrounding neighborhood was
made up mainly of one-­to two-­story residences.
Charles Atherton, secretary for the Commission
of Fine Arts, stated that the school would be a
“good symbol and an excellent landmark” in its
neighborhood.69 Woodson, built as a monument,
served as one for the community and the city at
large.
Woodson’s interior space was devised to increase flexibility, although the architects did not
fully adopt the open plan. The total dissolution
of interior walls was rejected for a more conservative notion of flexibility. Woodson’s layout allowed for new concepts in team teaching, with
movable partitions that allowed teachers to teach
a range of students, from groups of twenty-­five to
two hundred at one time (Fig­ure 7).70 The Educational Facilities Laboratories promoted these
types of innovative plans and changes in teaching strategies.71
The open plan emerged in the United States
in reaction to similar developments in Europe
where open-­plan designs allowed for “integrated”
teaching.72 The widely circulated 1967 Plowden
Report, developed by the British Central Ad­
visory Council for Education, declared that “it
is both an educational and an architectural responsibility to see that the shape of schools is
determined by educational trends rather than
by architectural fashion.”73 This report, which
focused on primary schools, stressed that the
open plan allowed schools to address different
learning needs of students. It also documented
curricular changes and the major overhauls
needed in British education, and it provided
diagrams of varied configurations of the open-­
plan school.
In The Open Classroom: A Practical Guide to a
New Way of Teaching (1969) educator Herbert R.
Kohl introduced the idea that an open teaching environment could be the key to success
in rigidly authoritarian, embattled, and failing
urban schools.74 The earliest open-­plan schools
constructed in the United States were suburban
elementary schools, although the open-­plan design spread to all levels of instruction including to high schools by the mid-­1970s.75 These
schools “represented a commitment to the belief
that education is dynamic—­that change is inevitable.”76 With few permanent walls, they offered increased flexibility by enabling teaching
staff to create learning spaces to fit their needs.
Often the rhetoric of open-­plan schools reflected
a new egalitarian approach to education, one that
would appeal to the administrators and city officials interested in building Dunbar High School
anew. As a 1971 publication on open-­plan schools
proclaimed:
We have taken down the walls and with the walls
have come those things that formed a wall between us. We are no more separated by our roles—­
Figure 7. Interior of
Woodson classroom
with movable partition
visible along the ceiling
and wall. Woodson High
School Yearbook, 1978,
45. Courtesy Sumner
Museum, Washington
D.C. Public Schools
Archives, Washington,
D.C.
principal—­teacher—­student. We meet as equals,
all as learners.77
The success of open-­plan schools depended on
the implementation of design in concert with new
teaching methods that complemented specially
configured and furnished spaces. These methods included team-­teaching, modular teaching,
and nongraded levels of instruction that emphasized each individual’s learning process. Two innovative developments in interior design were the
creation of modular furniture units, which could
be adapted to various spaces within schools, and
carpeting throughout. The Q-­Space, an early
example of a modular unit, was concerned with
human scale and individual study spaces in an increasingly flexible learning environment. Carpet­
ing reduced noise and created more surface area
for the absorption of sounds that could distract
students in an environment that lacked walls.
Ronald Beckman, director of the Research and
Design Institute in Providence, Rhode Island,
supported the use of carpet in open-­plan schools,
arguing that it could become a teaching surface
upon which instructors and students gathered.
He also claimed that because carpet was anti-­
institutional in feel, it created a more welcoming
atmosphere for students and could be used interactively with graphics and color.78
Granville Woodson, superintendent of Wash­
ing­ton’s school system in the 1970s, embraced
open plans as they gained prominence in school
and architectural journals in the States. In 1971
the architectural critic Wolf Von Eckardt proclaimed in the Washington Post:
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
107
Washington’s school board is at last ready to break
through the old, eggcrate classroom walls. . . . All
of the 11 new public school buildings currently
on the drawing boards call for the so-­called “open
plan” that replaces the rigid physical and intellectual confinement of enclosed classrooms.79
The construction of Shaw Junior High School
(1973–77) was a turning point in programmatic
and spatial organization in secondary school design in Washington. This school, the first open-­
plan secondary school in the city, was soon followed by Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
Dunbar’s design crystallized the aesthetic and
programmatic intentions seen at both Woodson
High and Shaw Junior High; it was a high-­rise
open-­plan school, a combination previously not
attempted in this city.
Shaw Junior High School, designed by Sulton-­
Campbell Architects, was the centerpiece in the
1969 Shaw Urban Renewal Area plan. Adopted
by the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land
Agency (RLA), the plan rejected wholesale demolition and instead embraced rehabilitation of
select buildings.80 The goal was to develop thriving institutions and housing in the riot-­stricken
area and with the new school to reinvigorate and
strengthen the image of the post-­r iot community.81 The local Model Inner City Community
Organization (MICCO), led by future congressman Walter Fauntroy, worked in conjunction with
the RLA to ensure adequate representation of the
black community in the design process. The architects and consulting engineers were African
Americans, selected because black architects and
other construction professionals demanded involvement. Blacks, as the African Ameri­can architect Robert Nash poignantly stated,
are now at the point where it is necessary for
them to take a massive, collective, objective look
at themselves with black people doing the defining. . . . At this very moment blacks are establishing their own “design criteria,” a good portion of
which dictates who is to do what and when.82
Black architects, planners, and contractors wanted
to have meaningful input and a positive impact
108
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
on the restoration of Washington’s riot-­torn
neighborhoods centered on the U Street and Sev­
enth Street corridors (Figure 8). Most of their
previous commissions were for African Ameri­
can cultural, religious, civic, and commercial
institutions such as banks, churches, and social
organization headquarters. Many of the larger
projects in the Washington area, including those
for public school construction, were given to
white architectural firms before the 1968 riots.
While the proposed design of Shaw Junior
High served as a source of wonder for teachers
and students, it was not praised nor supported
by the school’s principal, Percy Ellis.83 Ellis was
apprehensive because he feared the open plan,
with its logistical limitations, would be improperly used. He was also concerned that instructors would not be able to maintain order. He was
not the only professional to voice concern about
the open plan trend. Design researcher Ronald
Beckman bemoaned the fact that school districts that turned to open-­plan designs were less
concerned with innovative teaching and more
with economical design.84
During the highly publicized design and construction of Shaw Junior High, plans for an
updated Dunbar High School came into fruition with cooperation between city officials and
neighborhood activists. Initial proposals in 1967
indicated that the school was to have an addition
designed by the architecture firm of Walton &
Madden.85 The design was to be complementary
to the old school building with “various masses
consolidated” and brick used to “match the color
and texture of the existing [1916] building.”86
This pre-­riot proposal did not go forward, and
by 1971 the architecture firm Bryant & Bryant
had submitted a new replacement design, later
to be adopted for the school.87 In a discussion
on post-­riot Washington, black architects, and
community activism, black architect and educator Melvin Mitchell subtly alluded to a connection between post-­riot Black Pride sentiments
and black architect Charles I. Cassell’s term on
the school board as a possible reason Bryant &
Bryant was selected for the job.88
The firm Bryant & Bryant was the epitome of
vanguard in architectural education and prac-
Figure 8. Damage to
commercial corridors
during 1968 riots.
Boundary of Shaw Urban
Renewal Area outlined
in black. Square shape
is the site of Shaw
Junior High School,
star shape is location
of Dunbar High School
site. National Capital
Planning Commission
and District of Columbia
Redevelopment
Land Agency, “Civil
Disturbances in
Washington, D.C.,
April 4–8, 1968;
A Preliminary Damage
Report” (Washington,
D.C.: 1968). Image
provided courtesy of
the National Capital
Planning Commission.
tice. Charles Irving Bryant and Robert Edward
Bryant established the African American firm.
The brothers, graduates of Armstrong High
School and Howard University’s School of Ar­
chitecture, were members of the second generation of successful African American architecture
firms in Washington.89 The training that they
received at Howard was very much in line with
the mainstream pedagogy in use at majority-­
white academic institutions, particularly those in
the Northeast. The work of Paul Rudolph, dean
of the Yale School of Architecture from 1958 to
1965, was an influential source of inspiration
for the young architecture students at Howard
at that time.90 The Bryant & Bryant firm strove
to “bring the fullest measure of impact to the
forces which influence the quality of life” and “to
perform as sensitive humanists.”91 Fittingly, the
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
109
firm worked on a multitude of projects within
the Shaw Urban Renewal Area concurrent with
their Dunbar High School commission.92
The Bryant & Bryant design for the new building was an ambitious undertaking. Similar to
schools that employed urban renewal funds, particularly Shaw Junior High in Washington, and
University City and William Penn high schools
in Philadelphia, this new school was meant to
combat larger sociological ills in its community. It was conceptualized as both a school and
a community center that would be open in the
evening for neighborhood activities.93 Not only
was it planned as a prototype for solving the
problem of urban density through its high-­r ise
design, but it was also created as an exemplar in
open-­plan education, team teaching, and community re­v italization. The new Dunbar High
was envisioned as the shining model in the nation’s capital—­one that would serve as a guide
for successful school and community planning
for other municipalities across the nation.
In design and construction, the new $17 million high school synthesized aesthetic and programmatic inventions used at both Woodson
High and Shaw Junior High. This school would
Figure 9. Paul Laurence
Dunbar High School.
Bryant & Bryant,
architects; 1977. Courtesy
Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C. Public
Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
110
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
be a high-­rise building, configured on an open
plan (Figure 9). Von Eckardt praised the design
noting, “its brick and mortar arrangement does
away with the confining, authoritarian rigidity of
the old egg crate classrooms and recognizes that
the constant in our time is change, that education is a fluid process.”94 The design, the most
ambitious, avant-­garde, and expensive for a public school in the metropolitan area, cost more
than four times the amount estimated to bring
up to code the 1916 building it replaced.95
Mayor Walter Washington first requested
funds to replace the 1916 high school in the
city’s 1972 public schools budget. Replacing the
old Dunbar, however, had been a topic of interest since the late 1960s when the Board of
Educa­t ion declared the building “had passed
its prime.”96 In 1971 the Washington Post made
public the design for the new Dunbar High
School. Von Eckardt contended the innovation
was “something that Washington’s public school
builders have not dared since 1868 when the
Franklin School [designed by Adolph Cluss] at
Thirteenth and K streets, N.W., was built and
won first prize as a model school building at the
Vienna Exposition of 1873.”97
Robert deJongh, a twenty-­seven-­year-­old native of the Virgin Islands and a graduate of the
Howard University School of Architecture, was
the Dunbar High project designer. He ingeniously adapted a prototypical suburban “house”
layout, which normally would require a large campus site, to a constricted urban setting. DeJongh’s
design was based on a ninety-­foot tower. It would
not be divided into ten autonomous, stacked floors
but instead offer a continuous flow of space, best
experienced in staggered split-­level areas (Fig­
ures 10, 11). Von Eckardt explained:
The levels are grouped into three “houses,” that is,
complete schools within the school. Each “house”
has four levels, each taking half of the total floor
area, which form a complete unit for one age
group. Each has its own lecture and instruction
areas, studies, laboratories, teacher preparation
centers, a kitchenette for food preparation, and a
combined lunch and multi-­purpose space and an
outdoor terrace for lounging and recreation.98
The separation of the tower space into smaller
schools, “houses,” is the urban vertical equivalent
to early postwar solutions for suburban school
campuses. DeJongh considered site limitations
and attempted to create small-­scale intimacy
within a dense package. The EFL supported
the incorporation of the house model in urban
settings, stating in 1968, “While the facilities
could be spread out . . . if the school were built
in the suburbs, they need not be: the houses and
other buildings could occupy separate floors of
a city skyscraper, for example.”99 When the new
Dunbar building opened in 1977, students and
staff were optimistic about its innovative planning and design. As one eighteen-­year-­old student stated, “We are proud to have this school . . .
and we’ll see that it is properly taken care of.”100
The Dunbar design incorporated other progressive components. It included spacious athletic facilities and up-­to-­date science labs. Ad­
ditionally, the dining area featured “wall to wall
carpeting, as well as a café styled interior with
small four-­person tables that stand in marked
contrast to the long ‘prison’ style tables which
are mainstays in other school cafeterias.”101 This
Figure 10. Section
view of Dunbar High
School. Bryant & Bryant,
Preliminary Submission
for Dunbar Senior High
School Replacement,
n.d., 31. Courtesy Bryant
Mitchell Architects.
Figure 11. Dunbar High School, plan of
third mezzanine west. Washington Board
of Education Division of Buildings and
Grounds, Dunbar Senior High School,
April 1977. Courtesy Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C. Public Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
111
Figure 12. Interior of
Yale Art and Architecture
building, New Haven,
Connecticut, Paul
Rudolph, architect; 1963,
altered 2008. Ezra Stoller
copyright Esto. All rights
reserved.
Figure 13. Interior view
of lower levels in Dunbar
High School. Open
classrooms to the lower
left and upper right
sides of the photograph.
Courtesy Sumner
Museum, Washington
D.C. Public Schools
Archives, Washington,
D.C.
112
| design was not executed exactly as planned; in
the modified plan the terraces that were prominent in the tower drawing were omitted, creating
a more pronounced feeling of fortification.
The high school’s aesthetic expression was
consistent with the design of two monumental
buildings that Von Eckardt mentioned in his description of the new Dunbar building: the Yale
Art and Architecture building (1958–64) by Paul
Rudolph and the Boston City Hall (1963–68) by
Kallman, McKinnell & Knowles. Von Eckardt
stated that the new school design lacked the
“contrived complexity” of the Rudolph building
and did not exert the “complex monumentality”
of the Kallman, McKinnell, & Knowles building.102 However, the similarities in design were
still present. The salient characteristics of evolving brutalist architecture, such as reinforced
concrete frame construction and heavy massing,
were the most obvious, while the interior details
proved to be most influenced by the Art and Ar­
chitecture building (Figure 12). In Rudolph’s
building the staggered levels and open central
studio space were intended to promote collegial
interaction, an atmosphere that was emulated
in Dunbar through the central ramp system that
produced the effect of an atrium in the upper levels, with classrooms on the periphery (Figure 13).
Principal Phyllis Beckwith, an active patroller of the hallways in the old Dunbar building,
strongly supported the open-­plan design “because of the wide open sight lines” that enabled
her to “stand on one floor and observe students
B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
on both the half-­level above and the half-­level
below.”103 Ramps, escalators, stairs, and elevators
connected the various levels of the high school
and created an impressive network of circulatory
movements through the building that added to
the feeling of its grand scale. This circulatory network “let the building pulsate with life, much like
the veins and arteries in a body” (Fig­ure 14).104
While the plans of Woodson, Dunbar, and
Shaw schools were groundbreaking in the design of secondary schools, these buildings were
also part of a larger contextual shift in urban
design in Washington. This shift was informed
by the popularity of monumental modernism.
In 1975 the Watha T. Daniel Library and the
J. Edgar Hoover Building were completed. The
buildings had special dedication ceremonies on
September 27 and 30, respectively. The library,
named for the first chairman of the D.C. Model
Cities Commission and board member of the
Model Inner City Community Organization, was
a component of the Shaw Urban Renewal Area
plan designed by Eason Cross of Cross & Adreon,
Architects. The unique, compact building, built
from reinforced concrete on a triangular lot, was
located two blocks east of the Shaw Junior High
School site. The theme for the dedication cere­
mony, “Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood
Library: A Landmark of Social Change,” exemplified the merger of black social politics with
rebuilding in the post-­riot built environment.105
The appeal of modernist monumental architecture in Washington was also exemplified by
construction at numerous sites throughout the
city: the University of the District of Columbia
campus (formerly Washington Technical Institute), a joint venture that included Bryant &
Bryant (1976); civic structures such as the East
Wing of the National Gallery of Art, designed by
I. M. Pei (1974–78), and the Washington Convention Center (1983); and religious structures
such as the Third Church of Christ, Scientist,
designed by Araldo A. Cossutta, architect-­in-­
charge, for I. M. Pei & Partners (1971), just two
blocks from the White House.106 Monumentality was redefined through massing, materiality, and impressive and complicated geometric
volumes. Architects interested in creating a
monumentality that reflected the contemporary
zeitgeist rejected mundane, expansive, double-­
loaded corridors as well as classical façades.
The Preservation Battle:
Memory, Loss, and Renewal
The threat to the 1916 Dunbar building was not
considered imminent at the time that the new
school building had been proposed, although it
was clear in the 1960s that the building in its
present condition was inadequate. The future of
the older building, located next to the new building on the campus site, had to be carefully considered in the face of other pressing concerns.
Evolving plans for the new Dunbar, the largest
and most expensive public school to be designed
in the metropolitan area, did not address growing concerns among alumni and preservationists about what would happen to the 1916 school
plant. According to Von Eckardt, the new building would be built adjacent to the old one; he
made no mention of what would become of the
aged building.
When the new building was proposed, the
1916 schoolhouse was in need of renovation despite the fact that some changes had been implemented over the years. A 1965 report by Dunbar
alumnus and teacher for over forty years Mary
Gibson Hundley stated that in 1950 repairs were
made to the floor, moveable desks and chairs installed, a public address system added, and the
school library reequipped. Of these improvements, Hundley noted perhaps ironically, “the
school was refurbished and gradually relieved
of congestion. An enlightened community had
been ever mindful of Dunbar’s tradition and
alert to its needs.”107
While the repairs noted by Hundley were important for maintenance, no major overhaul of
the physical structure had occurred since the
school was built. Specific problems (such as a
need for better recreational facilities) were not
denied but acknowledged by administrators,
students, and alumni. Edgar R. Sims observed
in the mid-­1970s, “certainly there were deficiencies at Dunbar—­such as the lack of a stadium
and a better swimming pool.”108 Had any such
large-­scale effort to modernize and expand the
sports facilities at the older school been made,
the events that led to its demolition might have
been avoided.
The fate of the 1916 building evolved concurrently with the new Dunbar design. While initial proposals included the older building as an
auxiliary space for educational or office use on
the school campus, later plans called for its demolition to provide students with state-­of-­the-­art
sports facilities. In 1974 members of the presidentially appointed city council moved to restrict
funds for the Board of Education’s planned demolition. They withheld $430,000 of the total
$1.4 million requested. Three council members, Marjorie Parker, Henry S. Robinson, and
Figure 14. Interior view
of Dunbar High School.
The circulatory ramp
system that connects the
floors and mezzanines is
seen to the right of the
photograph. Courtesy
Sumner Museum,
Washington D.C.
Public Schools Archives,
Washington, D.C.
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
113
Marguerite Selden, all Dunbar alumni, rallied by
fellow alumnus and senator from Massachusetts
Edward Brooke, spurred this move. Selden declared, “we’re not against progress but there is
sufficient ground to build a new Dunbar and preserve the old.”109
The battle that would unfold in the African
American community took place across both
class and generational lines. It was also negatively characterized as a cause for sentimental
“womenfolk” (Figure 15).110 A high-­profile group
of alumni pushed to preserve and adapt the
building to new uses. They championed turning
the building into offices for school administrators or making it into a magnet school. In direct
opposition to the vocal and powerful alumni was
the camp of administrators including Principal
Phyllis Beckwith, newly elected Mayor Walter
Washington, and the Board of Education. The
lines drawn in the debate were not clearly cut;
all alumni did not support preservation; nor did
all city officials push demolition. Caught in the
fray were local historic preservation groups such
as Don’t Tear It Down!, professional associations
such as the American Institute of Architects,
local historians, and historical societies.111
Preservation battles were fought all over the
city in the 1970s. Washington preservationists
were called to action against the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, which
planned to demolish the 1899 Old Post Office.
Geographer Paul L. Knox has pinpointed the
mid-­1970s as a shift in the political economy
of the city, when zoning laws supporting large-­
scale, mixed-­use developments began to shape
the downtown landscape.112 Knox argued that the
expansion of the service industry in Washington
supported by the “Four A’s”—­accountants, analysts, associations, and attorneys—­increased the
need for office space and created a post­modern
aesthetic that had hitherto not been seen in
the city.113 The preservation group Don’t Tear It
Down! was born out of a struggle to retain the
unique qualities of buildings threatened by this
widespread development. The group began actively engaging in advocacy for other threatened
buildings throughout Washington, including
the Willard Hotel and the Franklin School.114
114
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
Concurrent with the birth of a local grassroots preservation movement was the passage of
the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act.
It allotted to the local government significant
authority that was previously held in Congress.
Elections instead of presidential appointment
decided who would govern the city. Walter
Washington, previously appointed to the office
of mayor-­commissioner by Lyndon B. Johnson,
was later the first elected mayor under Home
Rule. Walter Washington and his successor
Marion Barry represented new political power
brokers in black Washington. Neither were
Washington natives but rather were born in the
Deep South and relocated to the city. They represented migrant southern blacks, the same demographic that was criticized as being the downfall
of elite academic Dunbar.115
In 1974 Walter Washington and a new city
council were elected in accordance with the
changes in local governance.116 The terms of
Parker, Robinson, and Selden, the three Dunbar
alumni who served as appointees on the city
council before the incorporation of Home Rule,
ended. The new council decided by a majority vote
to move forward with the demolition. The vision
for a new, egalitarian black Washington came
with the advent of Home Rule and the subsequent
approval to demolish Dunbar High School.
Alumni who argued to save the 1916 building appealed to history, culture, and collective
memory. Some preservationists promoted black
heritage and empowerment; they wanted historic
buildings to counter a lack of symbolic, monumental structures in the present black community. William Raspberry, one of the Washington
Post’s most prolific African American writers,
stated “the old Dunbar building is more than
fine architecture, although it is assuredly that.
It is the embodiment of the proposition that
black children, rich and poor, can, if excellently
taught, achieve excellently. It is a very special
monument to black achievement.”117 The Evening
Star stated, “the black historical presence in this
city has been diminished in the indifference of
past generations and a denigration of the black
community’s tradition in the Nation’s Capital.”118
Since Washington served as a symbol for the na-
Figure 15. Newspaper
caricature of debate
illustrating Dunbar
alumni pitted against
the Washington Board
of Education. From
the Washington Star,
March 28, 1974: A18.
Courtesy Sumner
Museum, Washington
D.C. Public Schools
Archives, Washington,
D.C.
tion as a whole, many preservationists saw the
task of safeguarding the school building as saving a national treasure of black excellence and not
simply an act of community preservation.
Barbara Sizemore, superintendent of schools
from 1973 to 1975, offered a consolation potentially more offensive to alumni than pleasing and
sufficient. She stated that “a scale replica of the
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
115
old Dunbar building [would] be enshrined and
displayed in the new building as a symbol.”119
The Board of Education’s Committee on Capital
Improvements wanted “to approve the sale of
bricks from the old Dunbar Senior High School
Building to alumni and others” with proceeds
to fund a library at the new Dunbar building in
honor of Dunbar alumni.120 In both cases the
need for a physical remnant or reminder of the
old building was meant to satisfy the needs of
the vocal demolition opponents. However, these
efforts of commemoration, which focused on the
replication and distribution of the school’s ruins,
failed to allow the school to serve prominently as
a reminder of African American achievement
in the urban landscape: one that would speak to
a popular ideal of communal uplift based on a
shared past.
In 1976 Dunbar alumnus W. Montague Cobb,
then national president of the NAACP, penned
a letter to the Board of Education president and
Armstrong High alumnus Anita F. Allen that
hinted at class tensions in the African American
community. He stated, “I cannot address your
emotions and private prejudices or ambitions
which may have motivated in part the plan of
the Board to raze the building [original emphasis].”121 Cobb did not relent, and enclosed this
statement in a letter to the Board of Education:
One has heard no proposal to tear down Armstrong
High School across the street. The main Arm­
strong building is much older than Dunbar and its
plant occupies about as much space but there has
been no hue and cry to tear down Armstrong.122
Cobb fought to debunk long-­held stereotypes of
Dunbar students. He proclaimed rumors of elitism to be nothing more than “consummate hogwash,” and argued “black families of what would
today be termed ‘affluent’ status were almost
non-­existent [between 1917 and 1921]. Every­
body worked and everybody walked or used the
street car.”123 Cobb evoked the sentiment of the
Civil Rights Movement and the devastation of
the Washington riots when he declared that, “We
have had enough of ‘Burn, Baby, Burn.’” Instead
he beseeched the public to “Build, Baby, Build.”124
116
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
The upcoming 1976 Bicentennial Celebration
of the American Revolution and emphasis on national history played a part in the argument to
save the building and aided the push to preserve
memories of the “old Dunbar” for posterity. As
oral histories became more accepted for historical research, a group of Howard students created an oral history project that featured many
Dunbar alumni discussing their memories as
students. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia
Bicentennial Commission conducted oral histories in various neighborhoods, including Shaw,
but did not play a larger role in the fight to save
the old Dunbar.125
By the late 1960s, Dunbar had regained an
elevated national public profile, this time due
to high-­achieving basketball and football teams.
The Washington Post highlighted the successes
of the athletic programs, stating that “the beauty
of Dunbar is not in the building itself, a tumbledown Elizabethan structure.”126 In 1976, at the
height of the debate about demolition of the
1916 building, Dunbar’s basketball team held
the national high school title and the football
team was ranked second in the city. Sports columnist Donald Huff declared that the basketball
team “may deserve not only the No. 1 ranking
in the country but in the world considering the
conditions under which they practiced.”127 The
pride of the new school would be built on its
outstanding athletic achievements and a state of
the art design—­one that required demolition of
the still extant 1916 building for a football field
(Fig­ure 16).
The manner in which the alumni attempted
to save the structure highlights the lack of tactical planning that was needed to prevent its
demolition. While the alumni relied heavily on
the political influence of powerbrokers such as
Edward Brooke and allies within the Superior
Court, there is little evidence of an attempt to put
collective funds together to save the old Dunbar
building, and the flood of rhetoric simply could
not produce the tangible results. While alumni
appealed to memory, the mayor and the Board
of Education focused on modernization projects
elsewhere in the city and continued to push for
monetary allocation for maintenance of other
schools including Coolidge (1939), Cardozo (formerly Central), and Eastern high schools.128 Ul­ti­
mately the alumni failed, due to lack of economic
clout, a profusion of rhetoric, and the view that
they were outsiders to the neighborhood school.
Principal Phyllis Beckwith noted, “None of the
people fighting to save this building live in this
area. They live way out in the outskirts. And yet
they are trying to dictate to the community.”129
The struggle between the middle-­c lass black
out-­m igrants and those of lesser means still
residing in the city was clear. In January 1977
Superintendent of Schools Vincent Reed stated,
“We wish to minimize any delays in evacuating
the old building, since we do not wish to raise
again the possibility that the old building will not
be demolished.”130
Don’t Tear It Down! and the Dunbar Alumni
Association filed a lawsuit against the city in
order to block the actions of the city council.131
District of Columbia Superior Court Judge
Harold H. Greene delayed the proposed demolition date, April 1, 1977. The goal was to give
Dunbar alumni “the right to participate in an
orderly and fair process of decision making.”
This process included listening to “meaningful
negotiations” between city officials, civic groups,
public agencies, and interested citizens.132 Three
months later, after acting as a mediator between
the opposing factions, Greene lifted the bar
against demolition.
The construction of a new urban school and
the demolition of the older building became a
powerful act of local political and cultural authority. City council members elected under
Home Rule pushed forward a new agenda for
the city in the post-­r iot era. The controversy over
demolition threw into high relief issues of race
and class that troubled the nation’s capital in
the early and mid-­1970s. The loss of a landmark
raised questions about collective memory and
identity in the black community. Old Dunbar
represented segregated, separate but “equal”
education and reflected a familiar architectural
idiom. New Dunbar represented a search for a
new, liberating modern design reflective of societal changes in the Civil Rights era.
During the controversy, economic scholar
Thomas Sowell mused that “almost as astonishing as Dunbar’s achievements has been the ignoring of those achievements.”133 The demolition
of the old Dunbar is a symbolic indicator of how
the achievements of the school could be erased
from physical memory. In Washington the demolition of Dunbar was meant to suppress the
story of the “black elite.” The difficult nature of
preservation of the segregated built environment
is clear in the example of the embattled 1916
Dunbar building. Historian Robert Weyeneth
has addressed this conundrum by highlighting the various ways segregation was enforced
in the built environment. Several techniques
that sustained segregation, including duplicity,
partitioning, and temporal separation, add to
the complexity of analyzing and commemorating segregated space and the impact it had on
its users.134 In most cases the narrative of exclusion is privileged and highlights the way that
many of the sites preserved are sites of protest
and hostility.135 For many black Washingtonians
the Dunbar site exemplified both exclusion and
hostility, albeit within the sphere of the black
community itself.
The changing student body at Dunbar High
Figure 16. Site plan
for 1977 Dunbar High
School. Bryant & Bryant,
Preliminary Submission
for Dunbar Senior High
School Replacement,
n.d., 10. Courtesy Bryant
Mitchell Architects.
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
117
School, the Washington riots of 1968, the demand
for increased citizen participation in rebuilding
efforts, more militant political sentiments, and
the passage of the Home Rule Act all fueled the
movement to demolish the old school building.
The erasure of the black Washington of the past
and the emergence of new black Washington
occurred in this decisive act upon the built
environment.
The lessons learned from the demolition of
the 1916 Dunbar building were not in vain. The
Joint Committee on Landmarks of the National
Capital placed the old Dunbar building on the
District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites,
designating the landmark in 1976. However,
this local designation held no ultimate authority
against demolition. It only guaranteed a delay in
the process. Members of the Dunbar alumni association began organizing to have the M Street
High School building designated a National
His­toric Landmark. They were cognizant of the
lack of power that local designations held for en­
dangered buildings. While that campaign failed,
a local Washington historian noted two decades
later, “it is ironic that the M Street High School
building survives to this day, albeit in deteriorated condition, while its better known successor
succumbed to the wrecking ball.”136 Alumni familiar with the preservation process from their
work with Dunbar successfully saved the M Street
High School building, which now provides community services for the North Capitol Street area.
Today, both M Street High School and the
vocational Armstrong High School are listed on
the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic
Sites as well as the National Register of Historic
Places, although neither has been granted national landmark status. The move to preserve the
M Street school building reflects the idea that
the M Street/Dunbar High School legacy was
paradoxically both a legacy in bricks as well as
an intangible idea. The paradox is exemplified
in the shifting attention to the M Street School
after the demolition of the old Dunbar building.
Associations of a time long gone were transferred
from one building to the next, yet the idea of
M Street/Dunbar High School and what the institution stood for appeared to remain constant.
118
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
Conclusion
Major overhauls in educational policy and architectural design led to a breathtaking new pace
of experimentation in the urban public school
system during the 1960s and 1970s. Riots and
urban renewal created new community activists who became more involved with local issues
confronting their neighborhoods and schools.
Forty years later these same schools, built in a
social and cultural milieu of upheaval, are facing the tests of time and taste, and many have
failed to meet the expectations of the twenty-­first
century. Shaw Junior High sits abandoned and
vacant. Woodson High School was demolished
in 2008 and replaced with a $102 million LEED
gold-­certified project designed by Cox Graae &
Spack and SHW Group.137
Time has not been kind to the open-­plan design for Dunbar. Like many of its Brutalist counterparts, it fell victim to neglect of maintenance
and outspoken criticism of its program and aesthetics.138 It is currently slated for demolition. In
2009 the school district and Office of Public
Education Facilities Management (OPEFM, now
housed in the Department of General Services)
conducted design competitions for a new building plant.139 A request for proposals and design
competition was announced and despite the participation of several competent firms the OPEFM
found no proposal satisfactory and no design was
chosen.140 The process was repeated in the fall
of 2010 when the OPEFM issued a new request
for proposals to a new set of architecture firms.
Several high-­caliber architecture firms, including Foster + Partners, Adjaye Associates, and
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, submitted designs
for the twenty-­first-­century manifestation of
Dunbar High School.
Sentiment ran deep with alumni and administrators that the new design should re-­create the
essence of the 1916 building and shift the narrative and institutional memory away from the
preserved M Street School. It became apparent
that the M Street School was not the building
that now-­powerful Washingtonians and Dunbar
graduates associated with the institution. It was
their school, the 1916 building, that they wanted
to conjure in the new design. At a dedication for
the Dunbar Room at the Charles Sumner School
Museum and Archives in 2010, former congressman and Dunbar alumnus Walter Fauntroy proclaimed that there is “nothing sadder than the
loss of memory,” in reference to the demolished
1916 building.141 Harry Thomas Jr., a city council
member, stated, “I hope we have enough architectural sense to do something reminiscent of
‘old Dunbar.’”142 City council chairman, Dunbar
alumnus, and later, sixth elected mayor of Wash­
ington Vincent Gray characterized the 1977
building as a “failed experiment in open-­plan”
design and called for the new design to “be able
to create connection to the past.” Gray declared
the demolished 1916 building an “outstanding
structure . . . majestic [and] fitting for the name
of Paul Laurence Dunbar.” He demanded the
OPEFM “put back what never should have been
torn down.”143
In December 2010 a replacement design for
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School by the team
of architecture firms Ehrenkrantz Eckstut &
Kuhn Architects and Moody-­Nolan Architects
was revealed. The project has an estimated $122.2
million budget.144 In many ways, it resembles
the 1977 building that it will replace: it is at
the forefront of contemporary design practices
for educational facilities; it incorporates flexible
learning spaces; it embraces new technology;
and it intends to redefine monumentality in a
modern context.
The new school differs in its attention to context and its embrace of the past and historical figures associated with the institution.145 The newest design for Dunbar has large expanses of glass
on the exterior and the majority of the edifice
barely rises over three-­stories high. Historical
elements are embedded within the design;
quotes from and profiles of historic alumni appear throughout the interior; and the school is
oriented to engage the historic Armstrong High
School building.
In the 122 years since the M Street School was
built, the institution has been housed in three
different buildings. Upon completion of the
newest design, the number will increase to four.
The continuous reincarnation of Dunbar strikes
at the heart of the institutional memory of the
school, creating a fractured narrative of the nation’s first high school for blacks. Additionally,
the tradition of politicians and activists using
Washington public schools as grounds for experimentation in policy and architecture leads
to a repetitive cycle of high design, incompetent
maintenance, and destruction. At the very least,
the need for funds to maintain buildings should
be recognized.
Dunbar is a particularly worthwhile case
study because of the historical association of
great accomplishment that continuously pushes
for innovation in design. Here, the grandiosity of
the new design proposed for the school reveals
an insecurity about the academic and cultural
climate of the institution today, and rests on the
belief that architecture has the power to redirect
the course of a school that has a depleted and
fractured institutional memory. The new building is proposed to open in the 2014–15 school
year on the very same corner of the campus site
where the 1916 building once stood. It is the location of the present-­day football field.
To view illustrations for this article, please see
the digital edition.
au t hor bio gr a ph y
Amber N. Wiley is a visiting assistant professor at the Tulane School of Architecture. Her
research interests are centered on the social aspects of design and how it affects urban communities. She is interested in the way that local
and national bodies have made the claim for the
dominating narrative and collective memory of
cities through design, and she examines how
preservation and architecture contribute to the
creation and maintenance of the identity and
“sense of place” of a city.
no t e s
I would like to thank my grandfather, Clarence H.
Dudley Sr., for sparking my interest in African American cultural heritage and the built environment
of Washington, D.C. He first taught me about the
history of black Washington; his stories about his
neighborhood LeDroit Park, Howard University, the
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
119
U Street corridor, and many other places were the impetus for my research on the nation’s capital.
1. See Melvin L. Mitchell, “‘The Fire Next Time’—­
April 4, 1968,” in The Crisis of the African-­American
Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and
(Black) Power (New York: Writers Advantage, 2003),
120–30; Nathan Wright Jr., Black Power and Urban
Unrest: Creative Possibilities (New York: Hawthorn
Books, 1967); Roald F. Campbell, Lucy Ann Marx, and
Raphael O. Nystrand, eds., Education and the Urban
Renaissance (New York: Wiley, 1968); Ricardo A.
Millett, Examination of “Widespread Citizen Participation” in the Model Cities Program and the Demands
of Ethnic Minorities for a Greater Decision Making Role
in American Cities (San Francisco: R & E Research
Associates, 1977); Erasmus Kloman, “Citizen Participation in the Philadelphia Model Cities Program: Retrospect and Prospect,” in “Citizens Action in Model
Cities and CAP Programs: Case Studies and Evalua­
tion,” special issue of Public Administration Review
32 (September 1972): 402–8; and Irene V. Holliman,
“From Crackertown to Model City? Urban Renewal
and Community Building in Atlanta, 1963–1966,”
Journal of Urban History 35, no. 3 (March 2009):
369–86, 371.
2. For a discussion of the superimposed landscapes
of the segregated white and black public spheres in
which the black public existed within a sphere of limited visibility, see Craig Barton, ed., Sites of Memory:
Perspectives on Architecture and Race (New York: Prince­
ton Architectural Press, 2001).
3. Scholarly discourse that highlights the intersection of race and the built environment often centers
on the marginalization of racial minorities by antagonists outside the racial or ethnic community. In the
case of Dunbar and the city of Washington, however,
the process of “othering” was internal to the African
American community. Class status and skin complexion, two characteristics that were inextricably tied in
the late nineteenth-­ and early twentieth-­century, dictated exclusionary practices. Additionally, research
that focuses on educational structures built in the
African American community has highlighted the
design of historically black colleges and universities
and Rosenwald schools but does not often venture into
the mid-­t wentieth century or the post–Civil Rights
era. For recent scholarship that examines the relationship between race and the built environment, see
120
| B ui l di n g s & L a n dsca p e s 20, no . 1 , sp r i n g 2013
Ellen Weiss, Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African
Ameri­can Designs for Booker T. Washington (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012); Angel David Nieves and
Leslie M. Alexander, eds., “We Shall Independent Be”:
African American Place Making and the Struggle to
Claim Space in the United States (Boulder: University
Press of Colorado, 2008); Craig L. Wilkins, The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture, and
Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2007); Lesley Naa Norle Lokko, White Papers, Black
Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture (London: Athlone
Press, 2000); and Darell Wayne Fields, Architecture in
Black (London: Athlone Press, 2000).
4. For detailed analysis of black social and political structures of segregated Washington, D.C., see
Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital (Prince­
ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1967), and
Howard Gillette Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race,
Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2006).
5. Contraband was the term used during the Civil
War for slaves who escaped the areas of the Confederacy and who the Union refused to return to owners.
The 1870 Census lists 43,404 black residents in a city
with a total population of 131,700. U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin,
1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States,” http://www.census.gov/population/
www/documentation/twps0056/tab23.pdf.
6. See Green, The Secret City, and Blair Ruble,
Washington’s U Street: A Biography (Washington, D.C.:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2010).
7. John Michael Vlach documented the early social
history of free and enslaved blacks and their respective
urban housing in “From Slavery to Tenancy: African-­
American Housing in Washington, D.C. 1790–1890,”
in Housing Washington: Two Centuries of Residential
Development and Planning in the National Capitol Area,
ed. Richard Longstreth, 3–21 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2010). See also James Borchert, Alley
Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and
Folklife in the City, 1850–1970 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1980) and Elizabeth Clark-­Lewis, Living
In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Wash-
ington, D.C., 1910–1940 (Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1994).
8. See Ruble, Washington’s U Street.
9. Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: A
History of the Capital, 1800–1950 (Prince­ton, N.J.:
Prince­ton University Press, 1962), viii. Important institutions in the area included the Normal School for
Colored Girls (later Miner Teachers College), Twelfth
Street YMCA, the Phillis Wheatley YWCA, the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Metropolitan Baptist Church, the Howard Theatre, and the True Reformers’ Bank. Ronald M. Johnson, “From Romantic
Suburb to Racial Enclave: LeDroit Park, Washington,
D.C., 1880–1920,” Phylon 45 no. 4. (4th Qtr., 1984):
264–70.
10. Blacks in Boston had created their own earlier system as a response to exclusion from the public schools in the city. Their efforts resulted in state
legislation that initially mandated separate but equal
facilities for blacks and whites in the 1849 Roberts v.
Boston decision.
11. Mary Levy, “History of Public School Governance
in the District of Columbia: A Brief Summary, Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights” (Janu­ary
2004), http://www.dcpswatch.com/dcps/0401.htm;
21st Century School Fund, “Re­place or Modernize?
The Future of the District of Columbia’s Endangered
Old and Historic Public Schools,” May 2001, 2–3,
http://www.21csf.org/csf-­home/publications/pubs
.asp#replace.
12. Kimberly Prothro Williams, “Schools for All: A
History of DC Public School Buildings 1804–1960,”
District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office
(2008), 4.
13. See Thomas C. Hunt and Monalisa Mullins,
“Horace Mann’s Common School,” in Moral Education in America’s Schools: The Continuing Challenge
(Greenwich, Conn.: Information Age Publishing,
2005).
14. Williams, “Schools for All,” 6. Cluss also designed the segregated black Charles Sumner School
(1871–72), which housed an elementary school, an
early iteration of Dunbar High School, and later, the
Myrtilla Miner School.
15. U.S. Department of the Interior, National
Park Service, National Register of Historic Places
Inventory—­Nomination Form for M Street High
School, 2.
16. See Dale Allen Gyure, The Chicago Schoolhouse:
High School Architecture and Educational Reform
1856–2006 (Chicago: Center for American Places at
Columbia College Chicago, 2011), 22.
17. Mary Gibson Hundley, The Dunbar Story, 1870–
1955 (New York: Vantage Press, 1965), 13, 17. The
school first moved to Thaddeus Stevens Elementary
School at 1050 21st Street, N.W., for the 1871–72 academic year, then three more times, first to the Charles
Sumner School at 17th Street and M Street, N.W., between 1872 and 1877, then the Myrtilla Miner School
at 17th and Church streets, N.W., between 1877 and
1891.
18. According to the National Register of Historic
Places Inventory—­Nomination Form for M Street
School, the school was renamed while it was housed
in the Sumner School building at 17th and M Streets,
N.W.
19. Gyure, Chicago Schoolhouse, 27 quote, 16–22.
20. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places Inventory—­Nomination Form
for M Street High School, 1.
21. See Gyure, Chicago Schoolhouse, 39. Gyure borrowed the term “egg crate” from William W. Cutler
III, “A Preliminary Look at the Schools: The Philadelphia Story, 1870–1920,” Urban Education 8 (January
1974): 381–99.
22. Gyure, Chicago Schoolhouse, 89.
23. William B. Ittner designed Central High School,
known today as Cardozo High School. Ashford oversaw the school’s construction. Williams, “Schools
for All,” 15. See also S. J. Ackerman, “Architect of the
Every­day,” Washington Post, November 6, 2005, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-­dyn/content/article/
2005/11/04/AR2005110401595.html.
24. “Plans for New Schools,” Washington Post,
September 29, 1914, 14. Another source listed the
bid amount for the M Street/Dunbar High School as
$550,000: “New High School Bids,” Washington Post,
February 8, 1914, 31.
25. Ackerman, “Architect of the Everyday.”
26. Ben E. Graves addressed a number of these
health concerns in School Ways: The Planning and
Design of America’s Schools (New York: McGraw-­Hill,
1993), 25; also see Gyure, Chicago Schoolhouse; “City
Budget Is Passed,” Washington Post, January 20,
1910, 4.
27. Washington Post architectural critic Wolf Von
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
121
Eckardt later criticized the double-­loaded corridor
plan of Dunbar as an “egg crate” plan. This disparaging association was meant to bring light to the rigid
and inflexible nature of spatial division in the school.
28. J. C. Wright, “The New Dunbar High School,
Washington, D.C.,” The Crisis 13, no. 5 (March 1917):
220, 222.
29. “New School Named Dunbar,” Washington
Post, January 18, 1916, 14. The District Commissioners rejected the Board of Education’s request that
the school be named after educator and abolitionist
Charlotte Forten Grimke.
30. Jervis Anderson, “A Very Special Monument,”
New Yorker (March 20, 1978): 93, 100.
31. See Wilma F. Bonner, Sandra E. Freelain, et
al., “African-­American High Schools: Other Portals
to Success,” in The Sumner Story: Capturing Our History Preserving Our Legacy (New York: Morgan James
Publishing, 2011), 168–94.
32. These cities were listed in the 1923 Dunbar
yearbook as the hometowns of students, taken from a
sample in the class of 1923. See also Tucker Carlson,
“From Ivy League to NBA: A Great Urban High School
Falls through the Hoop,” Policy Review 64 (Spring
1993): 38.
33. See Jacqueline M. Moore, Booker T. Washington,
W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift
(Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2003).
34. The technical education at Armstrong Manual
Training High School laid the foundation for the city’s
pioneering black architects including Charles Cassell,
Roscoe I. Vaughn, George Ferguson, Lewis Giles Sr.,
Lewis Giles Jr., Charles Bryant, and Robert Bryant. The
legacy of musicians and singers who graduated from
Armstrong Manual Training High School includes
Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Charlie Rouse, and
Lillian Evanti. Other renowned and respected graduates of Armstrong Manual Training High School
include the first black District of Columbia chief of
police Burtell Jefferson, Judge John D. Fauntleroy of
the District of Columbia Superior Court, and Washington Color School artist Alma Thomas.
35. See Ruble, Washington’s U Street; Audrey
Elisa Kerr, The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism,
and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington, D.C.
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006);
and Brian Gilmore, “Rose-­Colored Views of an All
Black School,” Washington Post, September 2, 2007,
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-­dyn/content/
article/2007/08/31/AR2007083101469.html.
36. Approaching her research as a folklorist, Kerr
underlined the importance of understanding the
practices chronicled in her book that included the
“paper bag test” and “comb test” as urban legends.
Their occurrence and retelling always included a degree of separation from the actual event. This system
was self-­perpetuating and self-­regulating, with varying degrees of tests—­skin lighter than a paper bag,
hair straight enough to comb without getting caught
in a kinky or curly hair. The research demonstrated
that from the nineteenth to mid-­t wentieth century
interviewees understood socioeconomic advantage
to be related directly to skin tone: blacks of lighter
complexion were afforded better opportunities than
blacks of darker complexion.
37. Kerr marked the 1954 desegregation of public
schools and the revolutionary period of the 1960s
as being the two major catalysts for moving away
from color-­conscious social stratification at Dunbar
and Howard University. For more information on
pedagogical under­pinnings and education at Armstrong see U.S. Department of the Interior, National
Park Service, National Register of Historic Places
Inventory—­Nomination Form for Armstrong Manual
Training High School, 7–8.
38. James E. Harrison Jr., “An Analysis of Fifty
Cases of Delinquent Negro Students in the Dunbar
High School with Reference to a Needed Program
of Preventative Guidance” (Master’s thesis, Catholic
University of America, 1947), 28.
39. Harrison, “An Analysis of Fifty Cases of Delinquent Negro Students,” 28.
40. Thomas Sowell, “The Education of Minority
Children,” in Education in the Twenty-­First Century,
ed. Edward P. Lazear, 79–92 (Stanford, Calif: Hoover
Institution Press, 2002).
41. Historian James N. Gregory estimated that
more than five million African Americans migrated
north and west from southern states between 1940
and 1980. See James N. Gregory, “The Second Great
Migration: A Historical Overview,” in African American Urban History since World War II, ed. Kenneth L.
Kusmer and Joe William Trotter (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2009), 21.
42. Board of Education, “Bolling v. Sharpe,” n.d., Series 2: Speeches, Statements, and Remarks, 1961–1967,
Box 1, Folder 33, Walter Tobriner Papers, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington
University.
43. Census Data for 1960 indicates that numerous
tracts with a majority white population had increasingly shifted to majority black. This trend would intensify throughout the 1960s and 1970s; see Figure 7.
44. Board of Education, “Bolling v. Sharpe.”
45. “Text of Dr. Corning’s Proposal for the Desegregation of D.C. Schools,” Washington Post, May 26,
1954, 17.
46. See Betty Bird, “Building Community: Housing
for Middle-­Class African Americans in Washington,
D.C., and Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1900–
1955,” in Housing Washington, ed. Longstreth, 61–84.
For more information on how these housing policies
affected LeDroit Park, the prominent African American enclave near Dunbar High School, see Amber N.
Wiley, “LeDroit Park: A Study of Contrasts,” Vernacular
Architecture Newsletter, no. 125 (Fall 2010): 1–9.
47. Washington Board of Education, Desegregation, n.d., 1-­2, Series 2: Speeches, Statements, and Remarks, 1961–1967, Box 1, Folder 38, Walter Tobriner
Papers, Special Collections Research Center, The
George Washington University.
48. See Reynolds Farley, “The Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas: The Emergence of Black Suburbs,” American Journal of Sociology 75, no. 4 (January 1970): 512.
49. See Michael Clapper, “The Constructed World
of Postwar Philadelphia Area Schools: Site Selection,
Architecture, and the Landscape of Inequality” (PhD
diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2008). Although
Clapper is discussing the situation in Philadelphia,
this trend occurred in major cities across the nation.
50. Carlson, “From Ivy League to NBA,” 36.
51. Jeanne Rogers, “Dunbar High Plays a New
Role: It’s Now a Neighborhood School,” Washington
Post, January 23, 1957, A22.
52. See Carlson, “From Ivy League to NBA,” 36–
43, and Thomas Sowell, “Education of Minority Children,” 79–92. Several conservative political scholars
have taken note of the academic plight of Dunbar
High School as evidenced by these articles.
53. A. Harry Passow, “Toward Creating a Model
Urban School System—­A Study of Washington, D.C.
Public Schools” (New York: The Teachers College at
Columbia University, 1967), 13.
54. See Bird, “Building Community,” 61–84. The
demographic change caused by black suburbanization
in the Washington metropolitan area was so drastic
that the 1980 census data spurred a number of studies
on the subject, including William P. O’Hare, Jane-­y u
Li, Roy Chatterjee, and Margaret Shukur, Blacks on the
Move: A Decade of Demographic Change (Washington,
D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies, 1982), and
Gary Orfield, “Minorities and Suburbanization,” in
Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Rachel G. Bratt,
Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson, 221–29 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). For more
information on black outmigration from Washington
into Maryland in the 1980s and 1990s, see Valerie C.
Johnson, Black Power in the Suburbs: The Myth or Reality of African-­American Suburban Political Incorporation (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2002); Mary Jo Wiggins, “Race, Class, and Suburbia:
The Modern Black Suburb as a ‘Race-­Making Situation,’” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 35,
no. 4 (Summer 2002): 749–808; Karen De Witt, “Suburban Expansion Fed by an Influx of Minorities,” New
York Times, August 15, 1994, http://www.nytimes
.com/1994/08/15/us/suburban-­expansion-­fed-­by-­an-­
influx-­of-­minorities.html; and Steven A. Holmes and
Karen De Witt, “Black, Successful and Safe and Gone
from Capital,” New York Times, July 27, 1996, 1.
55. See Ricardo A. Millett, Examination of “Widespread Citizen Participation” in the Model Cities Program and the Demands of Ethnic Minorities for a Greater
Decision Making Role in American Cities (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1977), and Roald F.
Campbell, Lucy Ann Marx, and Raphael O. Nystrand,
eds., Education and the Urban Renaissance (New York:
Wiley, 1968).
56. Louis N. Williams and Mohamed El-­K hawas,
“A Philosophy of Black Education,” Journal of Negro
Education 47, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 177.
57. David K. Cohen, “Education and Race,” History
of Education Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1969): 281.
58. Leonard Buder, “New Design Studied for City’s
Schools,” New York Times, February 17, 1961, 18.
59. Leonard Buder, “‘School Renewal’ Downtown
Urged,” New York Times, March 12, 1961, R8.
60. See Mandi Isaacs Jackson, Model City Blues:
Urban Space and Organized Resistance in New Haven
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008);
Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall,
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
123
1880–1950 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2001); Douglas W. Rae, City: Urbanism and Its End
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003);
Phillip Allan Singerman, “Politics, Bureaucracy, and
Public Policy: The Case of Urban Renewal in New
Haven” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1980); John P.
Elwood, “Rethinking Government Participation in
Urban Renewal: Neighborhood Revitalization in New
Haven,” Yale Law & Policy Review 12, no. 1 (1994):
138–83.
61. “A City School Gives a Lift to City Renewal,”
Architectural Forum (November 1963): 98.
62. New Haven Colony Historical Society, New
Haven: Reshaping the City, 1900–1980 (New Haven,
Conn.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 120.
63. James W. Button, Black Violence: Political Impact of the 1960s Riots (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1978), 33.
64. See Terry Ferrer, The Schools and Urban Renewal: A Case Study from New Haven (New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories, 1964).
65. “Meanwhile, an Encouraging Lift in the Design of Urban Schools,” Architectural Forum 119 (November 1963): 77.
66. Clapper, “The Constructed World of Postwar
Philadelphia Area Schools,” 6.
67. Ferrer, The Schools and Urban Renewal, 2.
68. “Meanwhile, an Encouraging Lift in the Design of Urban Schools,” 77–78.
69. Gerald Grant, “Eight-­Story High School Slated
in NE Washington,” Washington Post, November 20,
1965, A4.
70. Grant, “Eight-­Story High School Slated in NE
Washington,” A1.
71. Architectural historian Amy Ogata suggests
that techniques such as team teaching, a method
supported by the EFL, made school programming
more economical in the face of teacher shortages and
increased enrollments. See Amy F. Ogata, “Building for Learning in Postwar American Elementary
Schools,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 67, no. 4 (December 2008): 562–91. Although
her study focuses on postwar elementary schools,
these schools set the standard for secondary schools
that would follow. One such example in Long Island,
New York, is the plan of John F. Kennedy High School
(now Plain­v iew Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High
School), proposed by the architectural firm Eggers
124
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and Higgins in a “V-­quad arrangement” with removable partition walls. Robert H. Terte lauded the school
plan for efficient use of space, in “Plainview School to
Fit New Plan,” New York Times, December 8, 1964, 52.
72. This term did not carry the same connotations
as it did in the United States. Integrated teaching was
a variation of the team teaching method in the United
States.
73. Central Advisory Council for Education, Children and Their Primary Schools (London: HMSO, 1967),
http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/
plowden/plowden1-­28.html, 397.
74. The ideas that were incorporated into the design of Dunbar High School and other open-­plan
schools in the United States were over a decade in the
making; see Evans Clinchy, Schools for Team Teaching:
Profiles of Significant Schools (New York: Educational
Facilities Laboratories, 1961), and American Association of School Administrators, Open Space Schools,
Report of the AASA Commission on Open Space
Schools (Washington, D.C.: American Association of
School Administrators, 1971).
75. Dorothy Rich, “New School Plan,” Washington
Post, August 24, 1969, 129.
76. Ben E. Graves, School Ways: The Planning and
Design of America’s Schools (New York: McGraw-­Hill,
1993), 29.
77. American Association of School Administrators Open Space Schools. Report of the AASA Commission on Open Space Schools (Washington, D.C.: American Association of School Administrators, 1971), 20.
78. “The Human Factor in Design . . . More Than
Just a Pretty Chair: A Conversation with Ronald
Beckman,” American School and University 43, no. 8
(April 1971): 24.
79. Wolf Von Eckardt, “No Eggcrate, This,” Washington Post, March 27, 1971, C1.
80. Bruce Monroe and Malcolm X elementary
schools were open-­plan schools in Washington that
were constructed in 1973 (before Shaw). See Alice
Bonner, “D.C. Schools Open without Problems, Delays,” Washington Post, September 7, 1973, C1.
81. United States National Capital Planning Commission, Frederick Gutheim, and Antoinette J. Lee,
Worthy of the Nation: Washington, From L’Enfant to
the National Capital Planning Commission (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 311.
82. Nash as quoted in Melvin L. Mitchell, The
Crisis of the African-­American Architect: Conflicting
Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power (New York:
Writers Advantage, 2003), 124–25. In 1970 Nash became the first black to hold a national office position in
the American Institute of Architects, as indicated in
Betty Bird, Thematic Study of African American Architects and Builders in Washington, D.C. Phase II (Washington: United Planning Organization, 1994), 19.
83. Courtland Milloy, “$13 Million Junior High
Replaces ‘Shameful’ Shaw,” Washington Post, September 5, 1977, C1.
84. “The Human Factor in Design,” 24.
85. Minutes of the Meeting of the Commission of
Fine Arts, 18 April 1967: 7, Archives of the Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
86. Minutes of the Meeting of the Commission of
Fine Arts, 20 June 1967: 6, Archives of the Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
87. Minutes of the Meeting of the Commission of
Fine Arts, 8 July 1971: 2, Archives of the Commission
of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
88. Mitchell, Crisis of the African-­A merican Architect, 129. Betty Bird credits Charles Cassell as an
“instigator of D.C. minority contracting provisions
for architectural services” in Thematic Study of African American Architects and Builders in Washington,
D.C. Phase II, 7. Charles Cassell, Charles Bryant, and
Robert Bryant of Bryant & Bryant were graduates of
Armstrong High School and part of a small but significant fraternity of black architects in Washington. See Harrison Etheridge, “The Black Architects
of Washington, 1900–Present” (PhD diss., Catholic
University of America, 1979). It is important to note
that architect and author Melvin Mitchell would later
become a partner in Bryant & Bryant, and the firm is
now known as Bryant Mitchell Architects.
89. Mitchell, Crisis of the African-­American Architect, 131.
90. Mitchell, Crisis of the African-­American Architect, 105.
91. Bryant & Bryant, Architects and Planners, Washington, D.C., n.d., 5, American Institute of Architects
Archives, Washington, D.C.
92. These projects include the D.C. Frontiers Housing that was designed as fifty-­four townhouses on
four sites and intended to be purchased by the National Capital Housing Authority, as well as a 137-­unit
residential complex sponsored by Immaculate Con-
ception Community Development Corporation. See
District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency,
Annual Report 1970, 6. Accession 93-­008-­2 Series
2: Annual Reports, Box 2, District of Columbia Re­
development Land Agency Papers, District of Columbia Archives, Washington, D.C.
93. Bryant & Bryant, Architects and Planners, 16.
94. Von Eckardt as quoted in Jervis Anderson,
“A Very Special Monument,” New Yorker, March 20,
1978, 111.
95. Michael Kiernan, “Razing Fight Begins Anew,”
Washington Star, February 28, 1975, B1.
96. Peter Milius, “’72 D.C. School Budget May
Mean Larger Classes and Fewer Electives,” Washington
Post, November 10, 1970, A1. The reference to the
1968 declaration that Dunbar needed to be replaced
is found in Jacqueline Trescott, “Old Dunbar High
School: Too Good to Tear Down?” Washington Star,
n.d. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School Papers,
District of Columbia Public School Records, Charles
Sumner School Museum and Archives, Washington,
D.C.
97. Wolf Von Eckardt, “Design for an Urban Setting,” Washington Post, December 11, 1971, E1.
98. Von Eckardt, “Design for an Urban Setting,”
E6. Von Eckardt is one source who identified deJongh
as the principle architect of the project; the other is
the title plate for the blueprints on the new Dunbar
design in the preliminary project drawings dated October 25, 1973, in the District of Columbia Archives
blueprint collection. In the blueprints, Hector Carillo
is listed as a project designer. The preliminary design submission by Bryant & Bryant listed Charles I.
Bryant as partner in charge of the project, with project
co-­coordinators listed as Hector Carrillo and Robert
deJongh. Bryant & Bryant, Preliminary Submission
for Dunbar Senior High School Replacement, n.d., 4,
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School Papers, District
of Columbia Public School Records, Charles Sumner
School Museum and Archives, Washington, D.C.
99. Ronald Gross and Judith Murphy, Educational
Facilities Laboratories Educational Change and Architectural Consequences: A Report on Facilities for Individu­
alized Instruction (New York: Educational Facilities
Laboratories, Inc., 1968), 71.
100. Lawrence Feinberg, “We Must Have Pride In
It,” Washington Post, April 13, 1977, C1.
101. R. C. Newell, “New Dunbar High School Opens,
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
125
Still Facing Same Old Problems,” Washington Afro
American, April 16, 1977, C1.
102. Von Eckardt, “Design for an Urban Setting,”
E6.
103. Donia Mills, “Phyllis Beckwith: Portrait of a
Woman and Her School,” Washington Star, E5.
104. Mills, “Phyllis Beckwith.”
105. D.C. Public Library, “Watha T. Daniel/Shaw
Library History,” http://www.dclibrary.org/node/742.
106. Watha T. Daniel Library and the Washington Convention Center were both demolished and re­
designed in the twenty-­first century. The Third Church
of Christ, Scientist was the center of a deeply contentious preservation battle and is slated for demolition
at the time of this publication. Pei’s National Gallery
of Art East Wing is the only one of the “monumental modern” designs mentioned still in favor with the
general public.
107. Hundley, Dunbar Story, 50.
108. Edgar R. Sims, Dunbar High School: The Crack
in the White Wall, 1870–1974 (Washington, D.C.: Kiplinger Research Library, Historical Society of Washington, D.C., 1975).
109. La Barbara Bowman, “D.C. Council Blocks
Dunbar High Demolition,” Washington Post, April 2,
1974, C5.
110. Dunbar alumnus Robert N. Mattingly was
quoted in the New Yorker expressing sentiments about
the relationship between these preservationists and
gender roles and stereotypes. See Anderson, “A Very
Special Monument,” 114.
111. Anne H. Oman, “Saving the Pieces of Urban
History: ‘Don’t Tear It Down’ Battles Bureaucrats and
Wrecking Balls in Preservation Fight,” Washington
Post, December 1, 1977, 122.
112. Paul L. Knox, “The Restless Urban Landscape:
Economic and Sociocultural Change and the Transformation of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.,” Annals
of the Association of American Geographers 81, no. 2
(June 1991): 190.
113. Knox, “Restless Urban Landscape,” 189.
114. Jeremy W. Dutra, “You Can’t Tear It Down:
The Origins of the D.C. Historic Preservation Act,”
Georgetown Law Historic Preservation Papers Series,
Georgetown University Law Center 2002, 12. http://
scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent
.cgi?article=1000&context=hpps_papers. Don’t Tear
It Down! was the predecessor organization of the
D.C. Preservation League.
126
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115. Bennetta Bullock Washington, the wife of
Walter Washington, was a native Washingtonian and
a Dunbar High alumnus. She served as principal of
both Armstrong and Cardozo high schools.
116. Marion Barry served on this newly elected
city council before his bid for the mayoral position
in 1978.
117. William Raspberry, “Dunbar: Victim of Mediocrity,” Washington Post, April 25, 1975, A27.
118. “Dunbar Should Stand,” Washington Star,
March 6, 1975.
119. Jacqueline Trescott, “Old Dunbar High School:
Too Good to Tear Down?” Washington Star, n.d. Paul
Laurence Dunbar High School Papers, District of
Columbia Public School Records, Charles Sumner
School Museum and Archives, Washington, D.C.
120. Report by the Committee on Capital Improvements, August 28, 1975, 2, Paul Laurence Dunbar
High School Papers, District of Columbia Public
School Records, Charles Sumner School Museum and
Archives, Washington, D.C.
121. W. Montague Cobb to the President and Members of the D.C. Board of Education, 1.
122. W. Montague Cobb to the President and Members of the D.C. Board of Education, 4. Today the Armstrong High building is extant and serves as the early
childhood campus of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter Schools.
123. W. Montague Cobb, “The Dunbar Controversy: What to Do with a Famous School,” Washington
Afro American, March 15, 1975, 13, 20. The memories
of tensions between the two major African American high schools in Washington continued to persist
well after desegregation, and even in 1995 alumni of
Armstrong were vocal about the negative associations
that were a part of the rivalry. See DeNeen L. Brown,
“Still True to Their School,” Washington Post, July 13,
1995, 1. There is a collection of folklore surrounding
this issue as it pertains to Dunbar High School, Howard University, and other educational, religious, and
social institutions in Washington’s African American
community. See Kerr, The Paper Bag Principle; “Belief
and Practice in the Education of Black Washington,”
81–102; and “Complexion and Worship,” 103–12.
124. Cobb, “The Dunbar Controversy.”
125. Adrienne Manns, “Reaching beyond the Written Word,” Washington Post, March 17, 1974, H1.
126. Donald Huff, “Proud Dunbar Aglow after
‘Greatest’ Honor,” Washington Post, May 14, 1976: D1.
127. Huff, “Proud Dunbar Aglow after ‘Greatest’
Honor.”
128. Richard E. Prince, “Board Sets Change in New
School Plan,” Washington Post, December 20, 1973,
C15, and La Barbara Bowman, “City Asks Funds for
Building,” Washington Post, August 2, 1974, A28.
129. Anderson, “A Very Special Monument,” 112.
130. Vincent Reed to the D.C. Board of Education,
3 January 1977, 2, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
Papers, District of Columbia Public School Records,
Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, Washington, D.C.
131. See Dunbar High School Alumni Ass’n v. District of Columbia, 105 W.L.R. 745, 105 W.L.R. 817, and
105 W.L.R. 1213 (1977) and Don’t Tear It Down, Inc.
v. District of Columbia, 395 A.2d 388, 390 (D.C. Ct.
App. 1978).
132. “Judge Delays Planned Demolition of Historic
Dunbar High School,” Washington Post, March 17,
1977, 73.
133. Thomas Sowell, “Black Excellence: A History
of Dunbar High,” Washington Post, April 28, 1974, C3.
134. See Robert R. Weyeneth, “The Architecture
of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving
the Problematic Past,” Public Historian 27, no. 4 (Fall
2005): 11–44.
135. See Robert R. Weyeneth, “Historic Preservation and the Civil Rights Movement,” in “Connections: African American History and CRM,” special
issue, Cultural Resource Management 19, no. 2 (1996):
26–28.
136. Antoinette J. Lee, “Magnificent Achievements: The M Street High School,” in “African American History and Culture: A Remembering,” special
issue, Cultural Resource Management 20, no. 2 (1997):
34, 35.
137. Bill Turque, “A Hopeful Moment as New H.D.
Woodson High School Opens Its Doors,” Washington
Post, August 13, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost
.com/local/education/a-­hopeful-­moment-­as-­new-­hd
-­woodson-­high-­school-­opens-­its-­doors/2011/08/09/
gIQAF6p1DJ_story.html.
138. 21st Century School Fund, “Replace or Modernize? The Future of the District of Columbia’s
Endangered Old and Historic Public Schools,” May
2001, http://www.21csf.org/csf-­home/publications/
pubs.asp#replace; Mike DeBonis, “Fear, Hope, and
a Failed Dunbar High,” Washington Post, December
16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-­dyn/
content/article/2010/12/16/AR2010121606112.html;
Mike DeBonis, “How Bad School Buildings Happen,”
Washington Post, December 17, 2010, http://voices
.washingtonpost.com/debonis/2010/12/how_bad
_school_buildings_happe.html; Bill Turque, “New
Dunbar Design Unveiled,” Washington Post, December 14, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/
dcschools/2010/12/new_dunbar_design_unveiled
.html. For critiques of comparable school designs
see also Mike DeBonis, “End of an Error,” Washington City Paper, February 20, 2008, http://www
.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/34603/end-­o f
-­an-­error; V. Dion Haynes, “A Landmark’s Looming Demise,” Washington Post, June 11, 2008, http://
w w w.w a s h i n g t o n p o s t . c o m / w p d y n / c o n t e n t /
ar t ic le/2008/06/10/AR 2008061002953
.html?nav=rss_metro/dc; Inga Saffron “Changing
Skyline: William Penn High: Magnificent Folly,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 13, 2009, http://www.philly
.com/inquirer/columnists/inga_saffron/20090313
_Changing _ Sk yline _ _William _ Penn _ High _ _
Magnificent_folly.html.
139. The OPEFM was an entity created in 2007 in
the mayor’s office to fulfill the campaign promises of
then mayor-­elect Adrian Fenty for a complete overhaul
of the Washington school system, which had garnered
a reputation as one of the worst in the nation. Government of the District of Columbia Office of Public Education Facilities Management, “About the OPEFM,”
http://opefm.dc.gov/about.html.
140. Ruth Samuelson, “Design Competition
Launching for New Dunbar High School Building,” Washington City Paper, November 20, 2009,
ht t p ://w w w.wash i n g tonc it y pap er.com/blogs/
housingcomplex/2009/11/20/design-­competition
-­l aunchingfor-­n ew-­dunbar-­h igh-­s chool-­b uilding/;
Government of the District of Columbia Office of
Public Education Facilities Modernization, “Request
for Proposals Architect/Engineering Services Dunbar Senior High School,” November 16, 2009, http://
opefm.dc.gov/pdf/RFP-­for-­A rchitect-­E ngineering
-­Services-­Dunbar-­SHS.PDF.
141. Walter E. Fauntroy, “Remarks at the Dedication of the Dunbar Room,” at the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, March 27, 2010,
Washington, D.C. The Sumner School is the official
archive of the Washington public school district.
Despite Fauntroy’s sentiment rendered in hindsight, Jervis Anderson hinted in “A Very Special
amb er n. wil e y, The Du nba r H igh School Dile mma |
127
Monument ”that Fauntroy was considered an ally
for pro-­demolition advocates.
142. Harry Thomas Jr., “Remarks at the Dedication
of the Dunbar Room” at the Charles Sumner School
Museum and Archives, March 27, 2010, Washington,
D.C.
143. Vincent C. Gray, “Remarks at the Dedication
of the Dunbar Room” at the Charles Sumner School
Museum and Archives, March 27, 2010, Washington, D.C.
144. Washington Post reporter Bill Turque stated
the budget was $100 million, while a project summary provided by the Washington Department of General Services stated $122.2 million. See Bill Turque,
128
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“New Dunbar Design Unveiled,” Washington Post, December 14, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/
dcschools/2010/12/new_dunbar_design_unveiled.html,
and Department of General Services, “Paul Lawrence
Dunbar Senior High School (sic),” http://dgs.dc.gov/
DC/DGS/Construction+Projects/School+Projects/
Paul+Lawrence+Dunbar+Senior+High+School.
145. This argument was first presented in Amber N.
Wiley, “Innovation and Institutional Memory at Dunbar High School,” Society of Architectural Historians,
SAH Communities Blog, March 20, 2011, https://
sahcommunities.groupsite.com/post/innovation
-­a nd-­i nstitutional-­m emory-­at-­d unbar-­h igh-­s chool
-­amber-­n-­w iley.
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