EMERSON H. S. FACTS:

--  Located at 716 E. 7th Avenue, Gary, Indiana

-- Emerson School was completed in 1908 and opened as a middle school before becoming one of the city's first high schools.

-- The school was named for 19th-century transcendentalist thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson.

-- Emerson had the first high school swimming pool in Indiana and maintained its own zoo.

-- An attempt at racial integration was made in 1927, but ended under pressure and threats from white students.

-- Emerson closed in the early 1980s due to low enrollment, but reopened as Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts, a 6-12 school, in the 1990s.

-- Emerson is not scheduled to reopen at its present location for the 2008-2009 school year.

-- Among its graduates it is able to claim, from the Class of 1931, actor Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)