1958 -Baker Elementary School Annex - Altoona, Pennsylvania - Dated Buildings and Cornerstones on Waymarking.com

Library of Congress:

Location: Ward Avenue at Coleridge Avenue
Date of Erection: 1906-07
Description: The original Baker School was a wood-frame, two-story building with a hipped roof, red-brick veneer,
and a three-story bell tower with a pyramidal roof. Open arches on the top floor of the tower echo the arched main
entry at its base. An early addition doubled the size of the school with a mirror-image west wing five bays wide and
eight bays deep, with two large classrooms per floor. A 1959 steel-frame addition to the rear of the early building
combined red brick with concrete in a typical late-modern institutional style: a flat roof and emphatically contrasting
horizontal bands of windows and brick. The facilities added in 1989 are housed in a three-story, steel-frame building
also finished in red brick, with contrasting bands of concrete intended to visually relate the addition to the earlier
parts of the building.
History: Baker School was completed in 1907 on land donated by the Baker estate. A $10,000 addition in 1915
increased its size from four classrooms to eight. In 1957 the Altoona School District commissioned the architectural
firm Hunter, Campbell and Rea to design an eight-room addition to the rear of the original building. Six classrooms,
an auditorium, and an office were completed in 1959 at a cost of $385,000. For a year and a half during the
construction, the fourth-grade class met in the Ward Avenue Presbyterian Church across the street from the school.
A second addition, designed by Richard Karcher of the local firm Hayes, Large, Suckling, Fruth and Wedge, and
constructed by Hench Brothers Inc., was completed in August 1989. The $2.09 million project included a thorough
renovation of the original Baker School, removal of asbestos floor tiles, provision for bus access to the Ward Avenue
entrance, and demolition of a number of buildings between the school and Logan Boulevard to make way for an
expanded parking lot and playground. Liyswen residents lobbied the school board vigorously to ensure that the
school would expand back toward Landis Avenue or over to Logan rather than encroach upon residential areas. The
new addition included a kitchen and a large multi-purpose room that serves as auditorium, gymnasium and cafeteria,
and the auditorium in the 1959 addition was converted into a library. The school can accommodate up to 400
students.

Year of construction: 1958 Full inscription: "1958" Cross-listed waymark: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   03/10/2021 r.e.s.t.seekers visited it