ABANDONED and TORCHED Horace Mann High School in Gary Indiana
Exploring the ABANDONED Horace Mann High School in Gary Indiana
The now abandoned Horace Mann School in Gary, Indiana, once teeming with thousands of students, now sits abandoned and rotting, another monument to the lost prosperity of the city of Gary, Indiana.
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Horace Mann’s fortunes would ebb and flow with those of Gary; when the city’s population declined so did enrollment at the school. In 2004 the school board voted to shutter the building, and nine years later the ailing building still stands vacant and crumbling. Is the school’s rich history enough to secure its future?
The school was enormous, with a capacity of around two and a half thousand students. It originally consisted of three main structures that were eventually joined together. The cornerstone of the central building was laid on November 8, 1926 and construction was completed in 1928.
In 1929 Horace Mann School had a student body of 870. By 1937, it increased to nearly 2400 students and 80 staff members.
When enrollment grew to nearly 2600 in 1956, exceeding Horace Mann's intended capacity, the district decided to build an additional school on the southern portion of the property. John H. Vohr Elementary School opened in 1958. Sadly, the pond was filled in to make room for a parking lot.
When the steel industry declined in the '60s, the population of Gary began to shrink, as did the city's tax revenue.
By 2003, Horace Mann High School had only 546 students, roughly a fifth of its capacity.
The school closed in 2004 due to budgetary constraints and a greatly diminished student population.
Fast forward now to March of 2020 and I’m on my annual birthday exploring road trip, joined by good friends RiddimRyder and Chris Luckhardt and it’s time for us to have a look inside.
Similar to Detroit and in some cases, Buffalo, Gary, Indiana is a must see destination for anyone who is serious about urban exploring photography.
After a very long drive we arrived in Gary at 3:00pm, checked into our hotel and we still had a good 3 or 4 hours before the sun would set and take away our natural light.
We arrived at the school, a hulking and beautiful building, surrounded by trash and overgrowth and a young man walking the running track located behind the school. Access was easy, as was every other building in Gary, Indiana, safely inside we headed right for the auditorium to get things started.
The school was huge and the auditorium beautiful, much like Cooley High School in Detroit. The auditorium, once with blue seats has since been torched leaving nothing but twisted metal and springs and heavy decay.
This was a nice easy location to explore in the first location of the road trip, we stayed as the sun was setting and enjoyed some exterior views as the sun went down.
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