More memory lane traipsing on yet another chilly morning. This time I was thinking back to my junior high school days and all the drama around that tumultuous stage of my life. Well, who's life when they're 12 to 15 years old isn't tumultuous? But enough about that, how's the ol' school doing nowadays?
Of course I'd known it was abandoned, though that finally happened in 2009, well after I'd grown up and left Rhode Island. In the years after my '76 to '79 stint there and before it was closed down and replaced by brand new buildings nearby, it had been redesignated as the Woonsocket Middle School rather than the junior high. Not sure what the big difference is and I really don't care.
Apparently this huge labyrinthine building is supposedly slated to become residential apartments but those development plans, like so many "high hopes" projects in my " terrible despite" rough-and-tumble, slowly-decaying birthplace hometown, seemed to have, of course, stalled out.
Above you'll see one of Woony's average citizens giving a hearty one-fingered salute to the Google Maps Street View car as it passes by. I can almost hear him calling out, "Welcome ta Wun-sock-ET, ya faw-kin' ree-taaad!"
Welcome indeed, to this forgotten beauty of an edifice. Here's how it looks, as of these Street View snaps taken in '23. Not great with the weed overgrowth and some broken windows and shit, but not as bad as some abandoned buildings. Thanks I would guess to the very nearby homes surrounding it and a vigilant police force with an active alarm system.
There's a noteworthy documentary that was produced by a former student of this school back about a decade and a half ago. Here in this clip he talks a bit about his documentary, and the history of the school. He revisits the school and shows its classrooms, auditorium, gyms and hallways. I can almost smell the steam radiators heating up the old wood flooring, making the classrooms nice and toasty on those snowy New England winter days. It's just after lunch, my belly's full of Shepherd's pie and chocolate milk and I'm trying so hard to stay awake listening to my French teacher drone on and on about conjugating verbs...oh so sleepy...