Moving the arts high school to the Union Station neighborhood of DC

Today's Post reports in "Ellington arts school might be moved out of D.C.'s Ward 2," of an idea to relocate the city-wide arts high school to a site adjacent to Union Station in DC, which is also adjacent to the H Street neighborhood.

This reminds me of an idea I first laid out in 2003 or 2004 in the context of H Street Main Street, back when I was involved in it, building on an idea first expressed by Vanessa Ruffin, we suggested that the idea of an "arts district" "on" H Street should also be extended "within" the neighborhood. It's the difference between arts as only an activity of consumption vs. actually producing art. (I gave a presentation on this subject last summer at the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas conference--"Art, culture districts, and revitalization".)

That led to an idea for creating an arts oriented cluster of public schools serving the greater H Street neighborhood. Arts could include visual, performing, media, and language (both English and foreign language and culture). Each of the schools could specialize in a different language, building on the idea of strength in French at JO Wilson Elementary.

(The schools I mentioned back then were JO Wilson Elementary, Ludlow-Taylor Elementary, Wheatley Elementary, Miner Elementary, Maury Elementary, maybe Stuart-Hobson Middle School--already part of the Capitol Hill Arts Cluster and a "museum-oriented" school, Gibbs Elementary. But I didn't mention a specific high school.)

And there could be artists in residence on the various campuses. While it's too late now, the idea was also that the old school building on the Miner campus (now used as an office building by the police department), as well as the Old Eng. Co. 10 and Precinct 9 buildings (both slated for redevelopment as a small set of condominiums, although there is plenty of such inventory and plans for housing like this in the neighborhood already) could have been converted to arts related uses. (At the time, many arts groups including the Washington Glass School, were displaced because the creation of the Nationals Baseball Stadium eliminated a number of low cost facilities that were used by artists, including the Washington Sculpture Center.)

With the Ellington School in the greater neighborhood, this idea could be revisited (albeit not by me).

As for having an active school at Logan (for a long time the building was used for professional development, and then as a school facility serving other schools undergoing renovation, and it was the neighborhood's largest African-American school before desegregation, and was the largest neighborhood school in the area until it was closed, with a capacity of more than 1,000 students), I am a big fan of believing that DC public facilities should be located proximate to high-capacity transit. A "city-wide" school next to Union Station, vs. a school being located in a far part of the city only accessible by a couple bus lines seems like a winner to me.