The guys over at www.abandonedok.com have posted some great videos recently. One piece of note is their look at Page-Woodson School at NE 6 and High, just south of the Oklahoma Health Center.
The three-story, 88,000-square-foot building was abandoned and declared surplus by the Oklahoma City Public Schools in 1993. The school is historic, having served as the first segregated African-American high school from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Past proposals included renovating the 1,500-seat auditorium for use by the Black Liberated Arts Center and Ambassador’s Choir, creating a Museum/Archive and Research Laboratory for Langston University, converting the cafeteria to a soul food kitchen, and renovating the Olympic-sized swimming pool and gymnasium for community use. Under such plans the third floor will contain extended-stay lodging for use by local arts agencies, artists, and residents of the adjacent University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
An estimate was completed at the request of the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority in late 2006 that estimated a renovation would cost up to $10 million. And that’s the last I’ve seen or heard of anything involving plans to revive this landmark.
A few months back, when a weekend fire gutted a school in the area, I feared it was Page-Woodson, but as fate would have it the destroyed building was actually the nearby Truman School along NE 13.
Does a similar fate await Page-Woodson if nothing is done soon? Can anything be done?