Thurgood Marshall's old school in Baltimore to become national park site

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — In just three months, a historic building that has sat vacant in west Baltimore's Upton neighborhood will begin a massive makeover.

PS 103 Henry Highland Garnett Community center was a school built in 1877, and at one point was attended by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In June 2022, the building will be transformed into an amenity center and national park. It received $1 million in federal funds as part of the fiscal year omnibus funding package enacted on March 15.

The redevelopment plans include space for a legal resource center and gun violence prevention work and job training.

“We are going to have really active research around gun violence,” said the Rev. Al Hathaway, President of Beloved Services Corporation. “We will also innovate and understand gun violence and look at ways in which we can remediate it. That’s going to be one of the features of what we do here.”

Hathaway grew up in the Upton community and long served at a nearby church. He's part of the team heading renovations to restore the building into an amenity center.

The former school is surrounded by blocks of vacant homes and in a neighborhood that’s seen its fair share of violence.

“When you bring resources to an underserved community, that community now begins to flourish. And we’re going to do that through a number of things, to create jobs and have entrepreneur opportunities for young people in this community and we’re going to have programs to serve their needs,” said Hathaway.

Maryland Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, joined local faith leaders and West Baltimore residents to highlight the congressionally directed spending on historically under-served communities.

“This will become not just a memorial to Thurgood Marshall -- and it will bring tourists from around the country eventually -- but it will also be a living legacy, you’ll have classes there, workforce training, law, all sorts of other issues,” Van Hollen said.

Cardin said it will “be a community anchor as well as an attraction for tourists.”

The work starts this July and will take about a year to complete.

Cardin and Van Hollen also announced about $500,000 in federal funding for the Sandtown Community Center and the Bethel Empowerment Center.