Eastern Female High School, also known as Public School No. 116, is a historic

female Female ( symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

located on the southeast corner of the 200 block of North Aisquith Street and Orleans Street, in the old

Jonestown The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...

/ Old Town neighborhoods, east of Downtown Baltimore and now adjacent to the recently redeveloped Pleasant View Gardens housing project / neighborhood of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It was built in 1869-1870 and is typical of the

Italian Villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas ...

mode of late 19th-century architecture. It was dedicated in a large ceremony with speeches later published in a printed phamplet and attending crowds in early 1870. Old Eastern High is a two-story brick structure that features a square plan, three corner towers (northwest, southwest, southeast), and elaborate bracketing cornices, with a similar wood decorated porch/portico over front entrance on its west side facing Aisquith Street. Eastern Female High School was founded (along with its twin sister secondary school

Western High School Western High School may refer: Schools in the United States *Western High School (Anaheim, California) – Anaheim, California * Western High School (Illinois) – Barry, Illinois * Western High School (Florida) – Davie, Florida * Western High S ...

) in 1844 and was one of the pioneer high schools in the country devoted to secondary education for women. It was designed by Baltimore architect Colonel R. Snowden Andrews (1830-1903), also a former officer in the

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

during the

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. In 1907, the girls high school moved to larger, better equipped quarters further northeast in the city at the southeast corner of Broadway and East North Avenue (the former Samuel Gompers Vocational High School building, 1938–1953), where it remained for another three decades until 1938, when it moved to East 33rd Street and Loch Raven Boulevard (

Eastern High School (Baltimore) Eastern High School, established in 1844 along with its sister school Western High School, was a historic all-female, public high school located in Baltimore City, Maryland, 21218, U.S.A. Its final building, at 1101 East 33rd Street, is to the ...

), until it closed in the late 1980s. Then the old girls school building on Aisquith and Orleans was used as an elementary school through the early 1970s. Later in the 1970s the building was converted into apartments. The city transferred the building to Sojourner-Douglass College in 2003 after the institution paid $150,000. The college, which also operated in several other former buildings of the

Baltimore City Public Schools Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), also referred to as Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) or City Schools, is a public school district in the city of Baltimore, state of Maryland, United States. It serves the youth of Baltimore Cit ...

, ceased operation in 2015. In August 2016 the City of Baltimore listed the building on a foreclosure auction and sold it in 2017. It was to be developed into an entertainment and arts center, but the building remains vacant as of 2019. Eastern Female High School was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1971.

References

External links

*, including undated photo, at Maryland Historical Trust Defunct schools in Maryland Buildings and structures in Baltimore East Baltimore History of women in Maryland School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Baltimore School buildings completed in 1870 Italianate architecture in Maryland Baltimore City Landmarks Girls' schools in Maryland {{BaltimoreCityMD-NRHP-stub