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 1980 due to low enrollment, but reopened as Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts, a 5-12 school, in the 1981.

-- Emerson became a 6-12 school in 1982.

-- Emerson VPA moved out of the original building in 2008, to the former Kennedy-King school site.

-- In 2009 Emerson VPA located in the former Wirt H.S. complex in Miller, and is nown known as Wirt-Emerson.

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