The Hartford (Conn.) district has reopened the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School campus after three years and a $111 million renovation.
The Hartford Courant reports that the century-old school building, originally Thomas Snell Weaver High School, had never undergone major renovations. The windows and boilers were still original, the doors lacked modern security features, the ceiling leaked, and the air conditioning was unreliable.
King students were housed at Rawson STEAM Elementary School since 2017 while the renovation was carried out.
“There was a real possibility that Hartford was going to lose that historic school forever, but we fought hard, in partnership with our state delegation, to put the funding in place to do a full renovation that preserves the building’s magnificent architecture and will give a generation of young people a chance to learn and grow in a beautiful, historic school,” says Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin.
The middle school shares the campus with Breakthrough Magnet School-North, an elementary school that enrolls students from the suburbs as well as Hartford. Because of that, the state will reimburse Hartford for the vast majority of the renovation cost — up to 95%.
The schools have separate entrances but share the multipurpose room and a media center.
Construction crews restored terrazzo floors in the corridors that had been overlaid in carpeting and tile decades ago. After exploring a number of options, the team was able to preserve the high-end flooring rather than cover it back up.
Workers also repaired and replicated decorative plaster work and preserved several other stained glass and leaded glass windows and the original handrails and balusters at the main entrance steps.
