The Stephen C. Foster School, also known as the Stephen C. Foster Community Center, is a historic school building in the Central Lawrenceville neighborhood of

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

. It is named for composer

Stephen Foster Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour music, parlour and Folk music, folk music during the Romantic music, Romantic period. He wr ...

, whose father William Barclay Foster once owned the land on which the building is located. The school opened in 1886 and operated until 1939, when its students were transferred to the new elementary wing of

Arsenal Junior High School The Arsenal School is a historic school building in the Lower Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It houses both a middle school, Arsenal 6–8, and an elementary school, Arsenal PreK–5, operated by Pittsburgh Public Schoo ...

. Since 1939, the building has been used as a community center. The Foster School was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1986. It is also a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic dist ...

in the Lawrenceville Historic District.

History

The school was built in 1885–86 as the Washington Sub-District School No. 2. At the time, Pittsburgh's public schools were organized into ward-based sub-districts with the Washington Sub-District serving the 17th Ward or present-day Central Lawrenceville. The land on which the school was built had been donated as a

burial ground A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many dead people are buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ) implies th ...

by William Barclay Foster, the founder of Lawrenceville, and contained about 500 graves including those of veterans of the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

. However, after the cemetery stopped being used for new burials sometime in the 1860s, it became overgrown and was described as a "rendezvous for bad characters". Eventually, the local school board asked to use the site for a school and was given the property by the city. In 1882, a contractor was hired to begin grading the site. While some of the graves were moved to new sites by relatives and friends of the deceased, many of the remains were plowed up and deposited in a mass grave on the side of the property. The '' Pittsburgh Post'' reported, Work was temporarily halted after a lawsuit from a group of concerned local citizens including William Foster's son Morrison Foster, who maintained that the plot had been donated for burial purposes only and could not be used for a school. Foster told the ''Post'', The case eventually reached the

Pennsylvania Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System. It began in 1684 as the Provincial Court, and casual references to it as the "Supreme Court" of Pennsylvania were made offici ...

, which decided in the school board's favor, allowing the project to go ahead. A granite monument was placed at the site to acknowledge the unclaimed remains still buried there. The school cost about $40,000 and was reported to be "fitted up with all the latest improvements" including electric bells and speaking tubes for teachers to communicate with the principal. Part of the school property was later donated to build the

Lawrenceville Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh The Lawrenceville Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which is located at 279 Fisk Street in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opened on May 10, 1898. Designed by the architectural firm Alden & Harlow, it w ...

, which opened in 1898. In 1913, the school board decided to eliminate numbered schools and give each school a unique name. Washington School No. 2 was then renamed the Stephen C. Foster School in honor of the popular composer, who was the son of William Foster and younger brother of Morrison Foster. In 1914, workers uncovered more human remains while digging in the school basement. In 1939, after the completion of a new elementary wing at

, the Foster,

Bayard Bayard may refer to: People *Bayard (given name) * Bayard (surname) *Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (1473–1524) French knight Places Antarctica * Bayard Islands, off the coast of Graham Land, Antarctica Canada * Bayard, Saskatch ...

, and Lawrence schools all closed, with their students reassigned to the new school. Shortly afterward, the Foster building was leased to a Catholic organization for use as a community center. The Catholic Youth Association bought the building from Pittsburgh Public Schools in 1955 and continues to own and operate the community center as of 2024.

Architecture

The Foster School is a three-story brick building with stone trim. It is square with projecting entrance bays on each side. The front entrance is topped with a four-story tower with an inscribed

datestone A datestone is typically an embedded stone with the date of engraving and other information carved into it. They are not considered a very reliable source for dating a house, as instances of old houses being destroyed and rebuilt (with the old da ...

. The roof is hipped with a flat center and several small gables—two on the front elevation, three on the rear, and one on each side. The interior layout of the building, with four large classrooms on each floor radiating from a central hallway, has not been modified. Some original wood trim and coffered ceilings are still present.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Victorian architecture in Pennsylvania School buildings completed in 1886 Schools in Pittsburgh City of Pittsburgh historic designations National Register of Historic Places in Pittsburgh Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) 1886 establishments in Pennsylvania Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Pennsylvania Community centers in the United States Historic district contributing properties in Pittsburgh