'This building has light, energy, and life!' exclaims Dunbar Senior High School's principal Stephen Jackson. 'I love it, love it, love it!' Jackson is raving about the 280,000-square-foot brick, glass, and steel structure that opened in August in the Truxton Circle section of Northwest Washington, D.C. It will soon accommodate 1,100 students, but for now a few more than 600 are populating its halls. The public high school, designed by Perkins Eastman in association with Moody Nolan, is a four-story facility with an L-shaped plan (one wing for academics, the other'a chunkier block'for sports and arts), partly enclosing an athletic field.
The majestically modern edifice is the third incarnation of Dunbar on this site. In 1870, Dunbar was founded as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, the first of its kind in the United States, in a church basement at 15th and R streets. By 1916, the school took the name of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and moved into a new Tudor-style red-brick structure in the present spot. Recognized for its intense academic curriculum, Dunbar thrived. Its alumni include Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Brigadier General Elmer Brooks, and current D.C. mayor, Vincent C. Gray.
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