(photos by Lee Bey)
About 10 years ago, I wound up at dinner--if you could call it that--with gaggle of wannabe Buppie snoots when the subject of high schools came up. Everybody went around the table, giving forth on the high school they attended. Most of the snoots reported they had gone to the city's prestigious magnet schools. My turn came:
"Chicago Vocational."
The table got so silent, I thought I'd lost my hearing. "I-I-I didn't know you went to CVS," one of the group said, trying to fill the void. She could have very well added, "...you poor Dear" afterward. "Yep," I said proudly. "Cavalier. Blue and Gold. Class of 1983."
Going to CVS, now Chicago Vocational Career Academy, turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me in life. I majored in Print Shop and learned to operate printing presses at 17. For a guy who was a bit of a screw up then, this was a mighty accomplishment that did a lot to get my head on straight again. My senior year English teacher, a guy named Thomas Doyle (I need to track him down because I owe him a debt of thanks) told me I was a pretty good writer and that I should think about journalism as a career. The scales fell from my eyes. I majored in journalism at Columbia College Chicago and had a 13-year print journalism career before joining the mayor's office, followed by a spell at Skidmore Owings & Merrill and now my current position. But it all began at CVS.
Pardon the walk down memory lane. A confluence of things caused it. My 25th year high school reunion is next year; my oldest daughter starts high school next year and over the weekend, I happened to find myself back in the old neighborhood and I stopped off at CVS, 2100 E. 87th Street, to take a few pix.
Built for $3.1 million and completed in 1940 (it says 1938 over the main entrance, but the school was completed w-a-y behind schedule due to a strike on the site), CVS is one of the most architecturally imposing edifices in the city. The wing-shaped complex takes up 23 acres and boasted 400ft-long corridors. The school has 57 two-story shop classroom when it opened; its lunchroom could hold 1,500 students.
CVS was planned as a "great industrial school" and billed as the most modern and best-equipped trade school in the US," as the Tribune reported in 1939. It was designed to train young men--the school didn't go co-ed until 1946--for the Factory Age of the mid 20th century. Students majored in auto shop, woodworking, air conditioning repair, radio technology. Students would be no younger than 16 and rather than getting high school diplomas, graduates would get certificates that would make them eligible to work in their industry. The school's size is a nod to the belief then that there would be an insatiable need for these workers as the decades rolled on. Architects made room for 500 teachers and 6,000 students attending day and evening classes. The US Navy took over the school from June 1942 until April 1946 to train aviation mechanics for the war.
I've always liked the design of CVS exterior: limestone, square-jawed and modern, even down to the abstracted columns that frame the entry and the streamlined columns that line the face of the auditorium in the top photo. The funky modern "Chicago" typeface chiseled into the limestone is a great touch, as are the various medallions and insets showcasing the school's offerings. The federal Public Works Administration paid almost half the cost of the construction and the PWA's modern design aesthetic is evident here.
The school has a smaller student body than it did when I attended, but instruction is still going on. And check out this promotional video of the schoo's offerings. If you headed down the Skyway to Indiana, the massive school unspools itself out of your right-side car window. But don't be satisfied with that drive-by glimpse. Get up close and see.
