Gales School Holds It Down for Old School Red Bricks Downtown!
21 03 2008The Gales School building on Mass Ave NW may look a little empty right now, but it’s only temporary! What you see is the complete preservation of the entire brick exterior of the building, something that doesn’t happen often.
Originally built in 1881 by Edward Clark, who also happen to have designed the Capital Building, it servered as a school till 1944. The building was named after the 8th Mayor of DC and recently had been used as a homeless shelter. It was put on the District’s Inventory of Historic sites in 2002.
In an area of town that seems to have been swallowed by giant glass monstrosities, it’s nice to see a little red brick still!
Save the Bricks!!!!!!
make it into a boutique hotel with an amazing bar that i’ll get drunk at every night! woohoo!
In early 1931, as 125 workers demolished the Adolph Cluss-designed building that had housed the market since 1880, a reporter noted that “the old slow-going red-brick Washington… is rapidly giving way to the classic white stone national capital that L’Enfant envisioned”.
http://www.victoriansecrets.net/wdfin.htm
Wow great quote Sean!!!!!
So who is it that envisioned the Washington of white stone giving way to one of shiny shiny glass and steel????
and in the 80s Concrete?
[…] Gales School Shelter (at least 125 beds) on line to provide emergency shelter for men. This facility will be owned and […]
[…] year goes by without any progress on the old Gales School property along Massachusetts Ave NW. Only the facade remains of the historic building which has had all sorts of ideas thrown around […]