Find Out Why These Schools Look More Like Haunted Houses Than Classrooms

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Beyond Repair

The Gary Public School Memorial Auditorium in Gary, Indiana, on October 1, 2011.

The auditorium once served all the public schools in Gary but was destroyed in the Great Gary Arson of 1997. Despite being added to the National Register of Historic Places, the city lacks the funds to restore the building. In 2010, Gary put 11 of its 22 closed schools up for sale. Three of the properties have been sold so far.

Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

A School Disappears with a Town

Pastor Charles Hudson walks through the hallway of Madison School in Youngstown, Ohio, in 2009. Youngstown has 4,500 vacant structures in a city of about 75,000 people, and about 22,000 vacant parcels of land. Madison School was demolished in 2010.

Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters

A School Left Behind

A photo of a dilapidated school on an Indian reservation in Nixon, Nevada. The Bureau of Indian Education has the second lowest high school graduation rate in the country, graduating only 61 percent of its students.

Photo: Visions of America/Getty Images

Forced to Run

Weeds surround a school bus in Times Beach, Missouri. The largest civilian exposure to the toxic chemical dioxin took place in this town in 1983. Times Beach was abandoned by residents after the contamination and remains a ghost town.

Photo: Bill Pierce/Getty Images

What Is Left

These 1964 edition World Book Encyclopedias were found inside of the abandoned Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. In the 1950s and ’60s, Navajo elementary to high school children were bused from Arizona to attend the school. Before becoming a school, it was an army hospital used to treat WW II amputees. The school closed in 1984. This photo was taken in 2008.

Photo: Paul Richards/Getty Images

Making the Most of What Remains

Basketball players in Washington, D.C. put an abandoned school playground to good use. They started a tournament that draws a crowd and brings the community together. Pictured, a game in progress as the sun sets on a sweltering August afternoon.

Photo: Bill O'Leary/Getty Images

History Was Made Here

An eight-foot-high fence surrounds the abandoned Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C. The school was founded in 1902 and was one of two public high schools for black students in Washington. Duke Ellington is one of Armstrong’s most famous students. Booker T. Washington gave the dedication.

He said, “In behalf of my race, I thank the public school authorities of the District of Columbia for their foresight in providing for the black children of Washington.”

The school became an adult education center in 1964 and closed in 1996. Since then, it has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Photo: Dayna Smith/Getty Images

Ravaged by Hurricane Katrina

The library at Hynes Public School in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans was still abandoned almost two years after Hurricane Katrina. Of the 126 public schools in New Orleans, only 16 were unscathed by the storm.

Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS/Getty Images

Hope After Devastation

In 2010, Hynes Public School in New Orleans was rebuilt on its original grounds and made into a charter school.

Photo: Hynes School

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Andrew Freeman is a California native with a degree in history from UCLA. He’s covered a wide range of topics for TakePart, but is particularly interested in politics and policy. Email Andrew |@natureofdabeast | TakePart.com