HISD Hattie Mae White Building At 3830 Richmond Ave.

[HAM boss]

Does anyone have a good, high-res photo of the old HISD Headquarters building at Richmond & Weslayan which they are willing to share for the Heritage Society to use in an educational video? We will put you in the credits. It's for a new HAM Slice of History on mid-century architecture in Houston.

HISD Hattie Mae White Building At 3830 Richmond Ave.

[FilioScotia]

I Googled "HISD Taj Majal". 

 

 

[FilioScotia]

Here's another.

 

 

[HAM boss]

Thanks so much. The key is that we need the one time rights use to use it in a video, so we have to find the image copyright holder and get their sign off. Luckily, a friend of mine has come through with one. I really appreciate the help with it.

 

Interesting btw to read the complaints at the time that HISD was selling the public on why they needed a new building. The biggest troubles that people kept bringing up was that building visitors were always getting lost and that the acoustics in the grand lobby were horrible for events. 

[IronTiger]

The first picture in this thread is from Arch-ive.org, run by @sevfiv.

 

I've never been inside the building, or even seen it (I just remember the fence around the property with indications that it was used by HISD at some point, somewhere deep in HAIFistory there is a thread I made on it). It reminds me a LOT of how the defunct Zachry Engineering Center on A&M used to look like.

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

imagine a 1970's style elementary school with the grades separated into pods, with four or five classes in one giant room

now have all those pods connected by a central area, but all the pods are two or three feet higher (or lower) than the rest.

 

Lots of short ramps, lots of short stairs connected everything. It was an ADA nightmare.

 

 

I only went in once and had to have someone show me how to get out.

[HAM boss]

Iron Tiger, That's the one we ended up using since it occurred to me that she might have something. Thanks a bunch.

[Firebird65]

1 hour ago, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

imagine a 1970's style elementary school with the grades separated into pods, with four or five classes in one giant room

 

I actually was in two of these pod classrooms (or what Aldine ISD called clusters) for first and second grades. Cluster A for first and Cluster C for second at Hidden Valley Elementary.

 

To be honest, I kind of liked them. I was briefly in a regular classroom for a week in second grade before moving back to a cluster, and I thought it was kind of boring in such a small, confined space.

 

I don't remember having any problems learning in a cluster classroom. So I'm not sure why people these days speak badly of them.  

[mkultra25]

2 hours ago, Firebird65 said:

 

I actually was in two of these pod classrooms (or what Aldine ISD called clusters) for first and second grades. Cluster A for first and Cluster C for second at Hidden Valley Elementary.

 

To be honest, I kind of liked them. I was briefly in a regular classroom for a week in second grade before moving back to a cluster, and I thought it was kind of boring in such a small, confined space.

 

I don't remember having any problems learning in a cluster classroom. So I'm not sure why people these days speak badly of them.  

 

I was in Cluster C for second grade there as well (or "Unit C", as I remember the sign above the entrance stating). It was my first year at HV Elem, and to my second-grade eyes the classroom seemed vast. I think there were either three or four teachers assigned to the room, with each one rotating around to different sections depending on what activities were in process.

 

Do you know if the cluster classrooms are still there in a recognizable form? I'd have to think they'd have been subdivided into smaller rooms long ago. I occasionally pass by the school while driving down 249, but I don't think I've been inside it since fifth grade. 

[Firebird65]

20 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

 

I was in Cluster C for second grade there as well (or "Unit C", as I remember the sign above the entrance stating). It was my first year at HV Elem, and to my second-grade eyes the classroom seemed vast. I think there were either three or four teachers assigned to the room, with each one rotating around to different sections depending on what activities were in process.

 

Do you know if the cluster classrooms are still there in a recognizable form? I'd have to think they'd have been subdivided into smaller rooms long ago. I occasionally pass by the school while driving down 249, but I don't think I've been inside it since fifth grade. 

 

Yes, the teachers would rotate around, and I seem to remember we students would occasionally move too, but it wasn't like junior high or even my fifth grade class at Hidden Valley, where we spent the morning in one room and the afternoon in another.

 

I know for first grade (Cluster A) I had a Mrs. Baker for my main teacher, but I do remember moving around to Miss Christopher's area and Mrs. Kelly's areas, but I can't recall why. I have my final 1972-73 first grade report card in front of me now (complete with my mom's coffee stain!). It lists all three teachers, but the report card itself is filled out by one person as the handwriting is identical across every subject. I do remember Mrs. Baker did teach me reading (and I loved reading). I had Rainbows and Sign Posts as readers for the second semester.

 

Oddly enough, my grades for writing were two C's and three B's, yet I received five A's for the year in arithmetic. So much for first grade grades determining where you end up in life (I'm a marketing communications writer and I'm certainly glad it requires no math!). 

 

Based on my memory of reading, it's likely my main teacher (Mrs. Baker) taught not only reading, but writing and spelling too, as all of those are related. One of the other teachers probably taught science and math, as they are related, while the third taught social studies, music and art. So either we moved to their areas, or they came to ours. I sure seem to remember that we moved around, however. But after 45 years, I could be mistaken.

 

I seem to remember the cluster/group classrooms were turned into regular classes quite a number of years ago. Perhaps as far back as the 1980s. I have access to many historical documents from Aldine ISD. I know in the 1980s they added gyms to the elementary schools and it may have been at that time they changed over the clusters to regular rooms. I just haven't come across anything to confirm that. AISD was not particularly good at preserving its history, so I don't have everything. 

 

I went to Hidden Valley from 1971 to 1977. It was a nice school and I generally have pleasant memories of most years there. Funny thing, I was never supposed to go there at all. Kindergarten was not mandatory in 1971 and when my mom went to sign me up at Inez Carroll (the AISD school Northline Terrace was zoned to), she was told the Carroll program was full. But... there was room at Hidden Valley... why not enroll over there, they said. After all, as it was a voluntary and limited program at the time, AISD really didn't care where you went. So my mom signed me up at Hidden Valley. When it came time to go to first grade, I just kept going. No one ever said anything. I carpooled all six years with another boy in Northline Terrace in the same situation as me. Either no one at Hidden Valley ever checked where we lived or it just wasn't that big a deal to them. Probably a combination of both. 

[cowboybud]

On 7/21/2017 at 1:44 PM, Firebird65 said:

 

I actually was in two of these pod classrooms (or what Aldine ISD called clusters) for first and second grades. Cluster A for first and Cluster C for second at Hidden Valley Elementary.

 

To be honest, I kind of liked them. I was briefly in a regular classroom for a week in second grade before moving back to a cluster, and I thought it was kind of boring in such a small, confined space.

 

I don't remember having any problems learning in a cluster classroom. So I'm not sure why people these days speak badly of them.  

 

My parents didn't like the cluster rooms, so they sent me to Colonial Hills (Odom) instead of Thompson.

[EllenOlenska]

Hattie Mae is on West 18th and Mangum. I just drove by it. 

[Ross]

9 hours ago, EllenOlenska said:

Hattie Mae is on West 18th and Mangum. I just drove by it. 

HISD got enough money from the sale of the old building to construct the new one on property the district already owned. The new one is not an architectural masterpiece, but it is a modern building that is better suited for the workers and the public.

[EllenOlenska]

51 minutes ago, Ross said:

HISD got enough money from the sale of the old building to construct the new one on property the district already owned. The new one is not an architectural masterpiece, but it is a modern building that is better suited for the workers and the public.

So, there's two? An old one and a new one? There is an older complex on Richmond? 

[HAM boss]

The complex on Richmond and Weslayan was demolished in 2006. (I think that's the right year.) They just moved the name honoring Hattie Mae White to the new building on W. 18th. 

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

Pod B at James Lewis Elementary near Kansas City for third grade, Pod D for 4th grade, too many distractions.

 

that was nothing compared to the (poopoo) show that was Meadows Elementary in 1975/76- the entire school was one huge room with only the cafeteria and offices being separate.

 

they split the large room up into a normal school layout with walls a few years later, they did the same to Sugar Land JR HIGH (middle school... pffft!) the summer after I got out in '79

[IronTiger]

On 7/26/2017 at 0:07 AM, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

Pod B at James Lewis Elementary near Kansas City for third grade, Pod D for 4th grade, too many distractions.

 

that was nothing compared to the (poopoo) show that was Meadows Elementary in 1975/76- the entire school was one huge room with only the cafeteria and offices being separate.

 

they split the large room up into a normal school layout with walls a few years later, they did the same to Sugar Land JR HIGH (middle school... pffft!) the summer after I got out in '79

Wow! This post dislodged an old memory...when I was in kindergarten back in my hometown in the mid-1990s (where classes were only half-days), I remember one of my teachers saying that the classroom (which seemed rather large, at least for a 5 year old...I'd say that it was about the size of a typical elementary school classroom) used to be twice the size before they built a wall between the two classes (the building was built in the 1970s and still showed it...brown everywhere). I wonder if they did "cluster classrooms" for kindergarten back then.

[IronTiger]

On 7/29/2017 at 10:38 AM, IronTiger said:

Wow! This post dislodged an old memory...when I was in kindergarten back in my hometown in the mid-1990s (where classes were only half-days), I remember one of my teachers saying that the classroom (which seemed rather large, at least for a 5 year old...I'd say that it was about the size of a typical elementary school classroom) used to be twice the size before they built a wall between the two classes (the building was built in the 1970s and still showed it...brown everywhere). I wonder if they did "cluster classrooms" for kindergarten back then.

Keep in mind that this was CSISD, not Houston--but the timeframe seems right.