The Morton Street School

Source

The earliest mention I found of a school on Morton Street is on a map from 1873.  It shows the parcel occupied by the "13th Ward Public School". Within the next decade the name would be changed to Morton Street School, in keeping with the Newark tradition of naming school buildings for the streets they sit on.

By 1898 the Morton Street School had undergone a major rebuild. A large new section was added to the rear of the existing school, on parcels that formerly held houses.

Ten years later, the original building was demolished and a large, state of the art addition designed by Ernest Guilbert replaced it. The new construction, carried out by the E.M. Waldron Company, seamlessly matched the 1898 structure. The new space included a handful of luxuries. The building was so extravagant that several newspapers ran articles about it. The nearly 65,000 square foot addition included  an incredibly ornate 750 seat auditorium, a gymnasium, 35 classrooms and a large playground on the roof.

The $240,000 addition also included 2 kindergarden rooms, each with a stained glass window.

The stained glass tray ceiling over the auditorium was a true work of art. The gigantic display covered three quarers of the room.

One August night in 1912 the school roof was open to the public so everyone could enjoy the facilities. A concert was held, as well as athletic contests for guests to participate in. It was such a success that the school was once again in the news.

Anyone familiar with Newark knows how critical the Central Ward of the city was during the rebellion of 1968. The Morton Street School stood right in the middle of one of the hardest hit areas of the event. During the unrest a man named Junius Williams stood outside the Morton School alongside another man named Eulis "Honey" Ward. Mr. Ward was a democratic leader in the central district, and Mr. Williams was a young civil rights advocate. The two men watched as looters ran through decimated storefronts along Springfield Avenue as the unrest was unfolding. Mr. Williams would go on to become one of the most well known witnesses to the rebellion. His writings tell of the true causes of the uprising, which were often obscured by racist interpretations and speculation in the decades that followed. At the time this article was published, Mr. Williams was serving as the head of the Newark Historic Preservation Commission.

A century after being completed, the Morton Street School was closed by the district. At first the building was maintained and used for storage by the school district. However, after repeated break ins and storm damage, the school was quickly being destroyed. A 2013 assesment by the school district deemed the school to be in very poor condition.

Unfortunately in 2017 some local fame-hungry instagram accounts posted photos of the school, drawing hundreds of similar brainless fools to the building. With that came more local foot traffic, including grafitti artists and assorted vandals. A 2018 appraisal report recommends demolishing the school, and since it's already in such bad shape I can't imagine anything else happening to the building.