Rotting wooden floors, their centers collapsed straight through to the basement below, echo with the trickle of dripping water. Streetlights shine faintly through the cracks between the boards that cover the windows, bathing the chalkboards in an orange glow. Electric clocks, frozen in time, swing from the peeling walls on bare wires.
Wormley Elementary School has not seen students file through its vaulted double doors for 10 years. The building has not been entirely unused, however, as a half-circle of metal chairs in one room and a mattress in another attest. This will all soon change. On March 1, the property was opened to bids from developers who are considering transforming the space into a complex of luxury condominiums.
Georgetown University purchased the 17,500-square-foot Wormley School and the surrounding grounds in 1997 with plans to turn the building into additional classrooms and offices for the Graduate Public Policy Institute, currently located at 3520 Prospect Street, NW. According to the Main Campus Strategic Plan for 2001-2006, renovation was to be completed by the end of 2003. The site remained untouched, though, and the University announced its decision to sell the property in January of this year.
“I think a lot of the reason was financial,” said Brett Clements (CAS ‘07), who represents the Georgetown campus on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E. “There’s no money to renovate it and they don’t have any use for it.”
University Spokesperson Laura Cavender cited “community issues and philanthropic support” as the reasons for why Georgetown failed to follow through on its initial intentions to develop the site.
Some opposition to the University’s decision to sell the property has arisen among local residents. They worry that the new condominiums will increase the thoroughfare on an already heavily traveled section of Prospect Street.
“In general, neighbors tend to be concerned about the traffic,” said Victoria Rixey, President of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. “And I think people are accustomed to seeing it vacant.”
“I’ve heard a lot of people in absolute shock because they thought the University was going to use the space,” ANC 2E Commissioner John Lever added.
Wormley Elementary School for the Colored was built in 1885 and served as the public black elementary school for the region west of Wisconsin Avenue until shortly before the city’s educational institutions were officially desegregated in 1954. It later accommodated a small number of learning impaired students, before being closed in 1994 because of safety violations. The site is listed on the African American Heritage Trail Database.
According to Clements, the historic significance of the school prohibits it from being demolished.
Any decision concerning the future of the building must first be approved by the Old Georgetown Board, a federally sponsored committee responsible for overseeing the development of semipublic and private structures in the Georgetown area.
Bidding on the property is being handled by Washington-based real estate company Randall Hagner.
