Sleep ticket
Good sleep last night despite a thunderstorm. I'm realizing that good sleep opens up the door to the 1961-1966 Room in my Memory Museum. This is a consistent pattern.

Normally I have non-subscription access to that room, but 7 hours of sleep signs me in for full access.

Today's full access, for no discernible reason, showed me the PECULIAR architecture of Manhattan Junior High. At the time I was too miserable and painful to stand back and think about the architecture.

MJHS was built in three sections. West wing came first, then east wing, then the middle. West and east had three floors of classrooms, and the middle contained the auditorium, gym, and locker rooms. (Center of misery and pain for a nerd.) West had originally been the HS, east had originally been JHS. So the separation of the wings had originally made some sense. When a new HS was built around 1956, all of this old structure became JHS, and that's when it got weird.



There was NO direct path between west and east. You had 3 minutes to get from one class to the next, and you had to figure out which of the indirect paths was likely to work, depending on traffic and weather. (The new 'bridge' was added in the '80s, after the building was turned into a school administration center. Admins get direct paths. Nice for them.)

On the first floor (semi-basement) you got from east to west through a hall under the auditorium, which ended at the wood shop room. You then opened the door of the wood shop, walked past all the running lathes and saws and grinders, opened the other door, and you were in the first floor of the west wing.

From the second floor east, you entered the back of the auditorium, unless an assembly was in session; walked down the right aisle of the auditorium; opened the lower door; ran down a long winding hall which ramped upward at one point (which I JUST NOW REALIZED was needed to counteract the downslope in the auditorium!) and then entered the west wing.

From the third floor east, you had to walk down two flights, exit the building, walk across the courtyard, enter the west wing, then walk up or down to your classroom.

All in three minutes.

The gymnasium (aka Hell) was west of the auditorium. The locker rooms (aka SuperHell) were directly under the gym. The ONLY way to get in and out of the gym was a 3-foot-wide stairway that ran from the locker room up to the gym, with a landing to the ramped hall described above. There was an outside fire exit from the back of the gym, but we rarely used it.

How could the architect think that a one-person-wide sinuous stairway was a good way to get in and out of a gymnasium? Triangle Shirtwaist, anyone?

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 12:15 PM