Light Industrial

Accession Number P75-54-0244g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,

Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Another view of a portable classroom at Warren and Williams Streets, 1923.  This space clearly focuses on vocational training, which helped prepare children from the working classes for future factory work.

Modular Spaces

Accession Number P75-54-0241g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,

Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This interior view of the portable school house at Warren and Williams Streets shows several environmental features that progressive reformers sought to advance.  Although the desks are pushed close together, this classroom includes large windows for natural light and a source of heat, shown near the back of the room.

1920s Prefab

Accession Number P75-54-0242g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,

Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Modular classrooms are something I associate with relatively contemporary times, so the sight of portable classrooms in the 1920s was a surprise! This portable school house at Warren and Williams Streets in South Baltimore was photographed by the Hughes Company for the Winter Homes Corporation in May of 1923.  It may have been an extension of the old Southern High School, which was built at this intersection in 1910, expanded in 1926 and 1956, and replaced by a newer building on Covington Street in 1978.

Student Population Soars

Accession Number P75-54-N490g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,
Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Changing laws about child labor and the age of mandatory school attendance led to a student population boom in Baltimore's schools in the 1920s.  Students were met with a severe shortage of classroom space, buildings in terrible physical condition, and a slow municipal response to remedy the situation.  This image shows Nathaniel Ramsey School #96 at Smallwood and Ashton Streets in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, where the total enrollment in June of 1920 was 554.