Hope High School - Providence RI

City:: Providence, RI
Site Type:: Education and Health, Schools
New Deal Agencies:: Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
Started:: 1936
Completed:: 1938
Designer:: James D. Colgan
Contractor:: George J. Geisser

Description

Construction of Hope High School, undertaken with federal Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) funding, comprised one of the largest New Deal undertakings in Rhode Island.

“The Hope Street High School is one of the largest high schools in America, accommodating 2,200 pupils. It is in the vicinity of Brown University. It has 60 classrooms, an auditorium seating 1,285, a large stage and sound-moving-picture equipment, a library, study hall, cafeteria which accommodates 700 at one sitting, modern kitchen facilities, boys’ gymnasium, and a girls’ gymnasium with 105 individual shower stalls. There are special rooms for wood-working, art metal, machine-shop work, music rooms, and music library.

It is fireproof. The main entrance doors are bronze, the library, study room, and main offices are paneled in white oak. The building is 391 by 282 feet and has a volume of 4,438,960 cubic feet.

It was completed in June 1936 at a construction cost of $1,979,068 and a project cost of $1,995,748.”

PWA Project No. RI 6579

Source notes

C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown. "Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration." (1939).

Site originally submitted by Evan Kalish on January 15, 2012.