How 1920s Chicago Public School Design Reflects Changes In Education

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2018

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

More public elementary schools were built in the 1920s than in any other era. Their design reflected new ideas about child development and health.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.
0:11.9	Curious City listener Joyce Bogue grew up in Edison Park in the 1960s on Chicago's far northwest side.
0:19.3	She attended Ebbinger Elementary School from kindergarten to
0:22.1	eighth grade and has fond memories of the school. And she's noticed something about the building.
0:27.6	Being around the city, I saw other Chicago school buildings that looked exactly like this one.
0:33.4	And I just wondered, was there a plan, you know, who designed it and, you know, what the reasoning behind it was?
0:41.0	I'm Jen Mason Garp, Director of Interpretation and Research at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
0:46.8	And part of Joyce's question is easy to answer.
0:50.1	Ebbinger was built in 1927 and designed by Edgar Martin, the supervising architect for Chicago Public Schools.
0:57.7	And yes, it was part of a plan in the late 1920s.
1:02.0	A very large plan that was designed to accommodate the booming population and the influx of 216,000 new elementary students.
1:11.6	Between 1925 and 1927, CPS built the largest number of elementary schools it has ever constructed.
1:19.6	32 new schools. 32 in about three years. And most of them are still in use. Schools like Lewis, Peck,
1:30.0	clistled, prussing, they all look nearly identical to Ebbinger. That's not an accident,
1:35.6	because, of course, it's cheaper and faster to build one plan over and over.
1:42.0	In the 1920s, the way schools like Ebbinger were designed reflected changing ideas about how children should be educated and the role a school should play within the community.
1:53.0	Some of these ideas have stood the test of time. Some haven't. And that's meant that schools have had to find ways to adapt old buildings to new ideas.
2:01.8	And it takes up the whole block.
2:04.3	Recently, I met up with Joyce to take a tour of Ebbinger.
2:07.8	She hadn't been back since she graduated in 1969.
2:12.6	Standing outside the building as noisy trucks unload, I ask her to describe her old school. Well, it's a large, semi-dark brick building.
2:21.3	To me, it always reminded me of a castle, you know?
	...

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