John Webster makes with the camera in one of Philly’s ancient high schools left for dead.
When Northeast Philadelphia High School picked up and moved to a newer neighborhood in 1957, the staff wasn’t shitting around. Vacating the old location, they took everything with them but the kitchen sink (literally).
The remaining shell of a building gave it the old college try with a few attempts at next-generation schools, but ultimately, the old dinosaur wilted and died a grisly death.
In its last lonely years, the abandoned property became a primo destination for urban explorers. Naturally our “resident” Urbex, John Webster, was on the scene before the joint closed up for good in 2008.
Here we talk to John about the awesomeness he stumbled into.
Yo, John! What’s with Philly and all these spooky, abandoned buildings?
Philly is really cursed. All of these places seem to have a shady past.
Fortunately, there are still a lot of places in the city that are like that. I mean, fortunately for me, anyway!
Give us the backstory.
My mom was a Philadelphia public school teacher for thirty years, so she knew the story. And I did some research.
I went to Northeast High, but I was always told that there was an older Northeast High, but I didn’t know where it was, and if it was still around.
Apparently, this school was the original Northeast High. Because of the white flight that was happening in the late Fifties and early Sixties, and because Northeast High was always a rival of Central High [the two biggest public high-schools in the city], rather than give up that longstanding name, they just decided to build a new school.
They built a new school, but took along the name and everything in it!
They took out all the plaques and trophies, all the history of Northeast High, and they just put them in the new location! A lot of the [original] staff bailed on the place too at that point.
So you have a brand new school that has a 60-year history.
By 1958, the prestige of the old place just completely disappeared. All of the resources went to Central High or the newer Northeast. This gem of a building just became another school, named Thomas Edison. It got worse and worse. Edison eventually closed because it was not structurally sound. It wasn’t up to code, so it closed in the early Nineties.
In the mid-Nineties, The Julia De Burgos school took it over. They did a little bit of work on the building to get it up to code. It then became a school for new immigrants to that area, which was pretty much all Hispanic. A lot of them came over in the Seventies and Eighties, and they were coming over [in such large numbers] that there weren’t enough schools to put all the new kids.
In 2002, it closed up. They put some locks and chains on it, and that was it. It was abandoned and it was actually sealed up pretty well until about 2006. That’s when I got in.
What did you find?
It was in really good condition. I mean, there were computers in there, and posters on the wall. It just looked like they closed up one day and that was it.
I also found a yearbook from 1960. Our [one-time] police commissioner, Sylvester Johnson, was actually in there, as a kid. Then there was an older yearbook – I don’t know what it was still doing in there – from 1939. That’s when the place was still called Northeast. In the 1939 yearbook, all the people looked like they were going to be doctors and lawyers. You can see the status and the prestige back in the day.
By 2008, scrappers got wind that it was [accessible], and it started to go downhill from there. Scrappers were taking all the copper and the pipes out of it. The structural integrity of the building was compromised. Then the graffiti guys got in there.
Now let’s get to the really spooky stuff.
In 2010, I remember there was a story about a body in there. There were supposedly human remains in there, and they were found partially on the first floor and partially on the second floor.
On one of my first trips to the school, in the library, there were still a lot of books, and there was a jar that was sealed up. We opened it up, and inside were frogs in formaldehyde.
Yet the feel of the school was sort of “neutron bomb:” no people, but everything else more or less intact.
It was interesting to see the posters and educational supplies that were in there from the bilingual school, some of the lesson plans to associate these people with American life.
No landmark status?
In Philly, that’s the name of the game here, unfortunately. New York is much better at [granting landmark status], probably because there is just more money up there.
Philadelphia has an abundance of historical property that really have a full, interesting history, but the one thing they don’t have is money.
They don’t build ‘em like that anymore.
Architecturally, I thought the school was really cool. They don’t build schools with gargoyles anymore.
Have you bought John’s awesome book on Byberry State Hospital? Please do. Click here.
Watch the school go up in flames, captured by news cameras here.
