Abandoned Horace Mann School in Gary, Indiana (Video)

Music is “Hopes” by Prod Riddiman

The building was constructed started in 1926 and finished two years later.

The school’s starting year had an enrollment of 870.

With the rise of the steel Mills in Gary, the school reached 2400 by 1937 and peaked at 2600 by 1956.

Factors like steel mill job decrease and population flight to newly created cities surrounding Gary caused the population of the school to decrease with it’s city.

Population would dwindling decades later. By 2003, the school had 546 people. The school closed down the next year.

Part of the building would catch on fire in 2007 in an expected arson.

The school is named after Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859), a former member of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. Mann was an advocate for American public education reform.

Mann grew up in an environment filled with poverty. He would educate himself, through the library of his hometown in Franklin Massachusetts, before being admitted to Brown University at 20 years old.