Bruce-Monroe Elementary School at Park View

Park View Elementary is consistent with the school property subtype associated with the first municipal architect, Snowden Ashford and is unique for its 700-seat auditorium. No other Washington, D.C. elementary school before 1949 had its own dedicated auditorium, although some had gymnasium/cafeteria/auditorium spaces ... and such multipurpose rooms did not compare to this soaring space, with its balcony and remarkable, complicated trusses, clearly calculated to serve as a public meeting and performance venue. Inside and out, Park View is a superior specimen of the public elementary school.

The school as a whole is an excellent example of Elizabethan Revival architecture, lauded at the time for its expanse of windows, as well as technical improvements such as steam heat. The Tudor and Gothic styles were favorites of Snowden Ashford, evocative of traditional institutions of higher learning and thought particularly appropriate to educational use. In this, Ashford was opposed by the new U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, established in 1910. The Commission preferred classical and post-Renaissance modes, soon settling on the Colonial Revival for elementary schools beyond the city center. In this instance, Ashford’s vision won out.

The reason for construction of the auditorium lay in the vision for the school’s use. In good Progressive fashion, the new building was to serve as “a school social center,” “designed for the use of adults as well as children,” and “as inviting at night to the adult residents of that section as it is beneficial to the children during the day.” In a Thanksgiving address in the school auditorium, U.S. Commissioner of Education Philander Claxton told the Park View Citizens’ Association, “We are getting away from the idea that the school is for children alone, and it is coming to be the place of meeting for all, and it should be even more extensively used than it is.” The auditorium soon hosted plays, orchestral performances, scholastic and graduation exercises, elections and, of course, the regular meetings of the Citizens’ Association. In the early 1960s, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy addressed the students there and discussed such issues as Civil Rights, at a school that had desegregated only a few years earlier.

The provision of the auditorium and the accommodation of intensive community use were not accidental, but rather a calculated result of the advocacy of the Park View Citizens’ Association. While most of the schools of this era had been requested by their respective neighborhood citizens groups, Park View is an exemplar of that kind of civic advocacy. The young Citizens’ Association, and especially its indefatigable leader, John G. McGrath, had demanded first the temporary classrooms then construction of a permanent school. It insisted on naming it “Park View,” contrary to the “Lemon G. Hine” preferred by Hine’s successors on the D.C. Board of Commissioners (and ultimately assigned to a Capitol Hill school). It pushed for a larger playground, now the Park View Recreation Center. The Citizens’ Association wanted the school to be a true community center for an area that still lacked much retail and institutional buildings. By spring 1917 the members had begun a food cooperative in the basement. It was soon joined by a post office branch. The strapped Board of Education adopted other Progressive measures such as “platooning” the many classes.

Despite its conservative architectural style, Park View School was up to the minute in design for its building systems and naturally lit classrooms and progressive in its provision of adult education, community-use spaces, and extensive playgrounds.