TBA IS THROWING OPEN the long-shuttered doors of Washington
High School this September, dusting off the vacant public school’s old
chalkboards and auditorium seats to host the nightly after-hours
performance and visual arts schmooze-fest known as “The Works.”
The building sprawls over an entire city block in inner Southeast
Portland, its imposing brick boiler-room towers rising amid Buckman
neighborhood streets lined with cute single-family homes. Washington
High was the first high school east of the Willamette, built in the
first years of the 20th century but not named after Washington until
1909. But for the past six years Washington’s classroom windows have
been unceremoniously boarded up with plywood, its entrance on SE 14th
chained shut.
Washington High has a restless past. Just 13 years after the school
opened, it burned to the ground. It took two years and $500,000 to
build the current brick building, which opened in 1924. Old alums call
Washington High School “WaHi,” and recall its various highs and lows
via an alumni website (wahicols.com): While a 1954 alum named
Vernon Hudnut nostalgically remembers his favorite teachers and their
important lessons, an alum from the ’60s just as fondly recalls smoking
cigarettes and joints on a sofa that lived for a few months on a
parking strip on the corner of SE 15th and Alder.
Facing declining enrollment and a tight budget, Portland Public
Schools (PPS) shut down Washington High in 1981, booting its students
to Cleveland and Grant. Abandoned for two years, the school reopened
for a mishmash of special uses. In addition to the PPS administrative
offices, the old school has hosted a daycare center, a continuation
high for pregnant girls, a “vocational program for Indian youth,” and
Portland’s special-ed students, according to Doug Capps of PPS.
But facing even steeper budget cuts, PPS vacated the school entirely
in 2003 and began shopping around for someone to buy up the prime real
estate. They nearly sealed a deal with Beam Development, who planned to
divide the historic school building into condos. But that plan
gradually fell apart in 2008 as condo financing dried up.
During the condo-planning phase, another resident briefly occupied
the abandoned school: The Red Cross made plans to house Hurricane
Katrina victims in the school’s old cafeteria. In autumn of 2005, the
Red Cross and National Guard rolled into WaHi and set up rows of cots,
but the expected influx of Katrina victims never arrived. Not a single
hurricane victim ever slept in the empty beds, says Capps.
While the capitalistic and philanthropic plans both fizzled,
Portland Parks has been moving along plans for a long-desired multiuse
community center. Portland Parks purchased WaHi’s west field in 2004
and a few years later tore down the high school’s gym and cafeteria.
But after tearing down the buildings, it took until 2009 to secure the
money to draw up plans for new ones. “There’s been all kinds of
wish-list discussions about this in the neighborhood for years,” says
neighborhood association member Kina Voelz, who dreams of everything
from a photography studio to rooftop garden in the building.
For a few brief weeks this September, music, video and dance will
bring new life to Washington High’s long-silent halls, writing a new
page in its scattered history.