There was a third staircase in the back of the wing which housed the three gymnasiums. This was far smaller and more difficult to access than the two main staircases, but we used this one to go down to ground floor, as we hadn’t been here yet.
We left the stairs at the first floor gymnasium, where the wall bars were again partly dismantled. On the table was a strange device and a note telling, that they are measuring the amount of radon gas in the air.
Next to the gymnasium was a small room with yet more sports equipment.
Down in the basement we found toilets. Someone has practiced german on the toilet stall wall. That one almost says “Shit, my tank is broken”. Almost.
The basement housed the schools woodworking class. It was rather empty.
There were still some glue and paint left from the last lesson.
There was cleaning equipment in the closet, but the pupils really didn’t bother to clean up after painting their assignments.
Instead they painted the walls here, too.
There was a small and worn out back door at the end of the small staircase we used to descend the building.
Below the gymnasiums was a small apartment, which had probably originally been the caretaker’s. It was common to build a caretakers aparment to schools back then, as it was very common for the caretaker to live in the school building. My primary school caretaker still lived at our school in the late 90’s before he retired. His successor didn’t move in and the apartment got a new use.
Nobody has lived here in ages, either. It looks rather like an office – perhaps that of the school curator or nurse. Some items also hint that this one has been in student union use.
The apartment really wasn’t that big. But they weren’t in the 1930’s.
The kitchen is no longer there. This is what the hints of the student union times are: games and a Coca Cola lamp.
The apartment had a kitchen / living room and one very small bedroom. A box from the woodworking class with paint and stuff has ended up here.
The apartment had a second entrance with a place for coats and a closet with food. Could someone explain what this thing with pickled cucumber is, as this is only the third house I have thoroughly explored and the second one to feature cans of this stuff?
The ground floor lobby was smaller and darker than the others. Maybe because the entrance took space from the big glass windows that the other floors had.
One more room in the basement. This one was most definitely used by the student union, as there were couches and games. Those old wooden tv sets were still common in schools in the early 2000’s. And classes didn’t have their own tv sets. When the time came to watch a movie about once in a semester, the teacher got a tv and rolled it to the classroom in a large cupboard with wheels. When that happened, we always knew something special was to come.
One final climb up the stairs…
…and we were back where we started from on the ground floor. All in all the visit took several hours and by the end of it it was quite difficult to breathe.
So what happened with this building? The part on the left housing the gymnasiums along with the middle part housing the lobbies and the two first columns of windows on the right housing the main staircase and some small classrooms, were preserved and renovated. The awful Minerit coating was removed and the school was plastered and painted white like it originally was.
The gymnasiums are still in use as sports facilities, and an annex which houses the municipal swimming pool was built to the old building. It starts right at the wall and covers the area where this photo was taken.
The rest of the building on the right side of the picture was demolished about a year after our visit and replaced with a block of flats, which doesn’t fit there at all. And so the story of the once so graceful landmark of the city came to a partial end.
You can view all the photos from my visit to the school in the gallery.