Carver Vocational-Technical High School - fully George Washington Carver Vocational-Technical High School - also known as Carver Vo-Tech is a public vocational-technical high school located in the western part of Baltimore, Maryland and part of the Baltimore City Public Schools system.Founded in 1925, it was the first African-American (then labeled the "Colored" or "Negro") vocational-technical public high school) then established in the State of Maryland. Carver Vo-Tech serves grades 9 through 12, (freshmen-sophomores-juniors-seniors). It was named for the famous African-American scientist / botanist and inventor George Washington Carver (1860s-1943).The establishment of a "Colored Vocational High School" in 1925, then joined the recently renamed Frederick Douglass High School which had been previously founded in 1865 as the private Douglass Institute, located on East Lexington Street (between North Calvert and North Streets (now Guilford Avenue) across from the Battle Monument Square, then moved two blocks northwest to East Saratoga Street by St. Paul Street/Place at Preston Gardens", where it was finally absorbed into the newly established "Colored High School and Grammar School" by the then 54 year old city public schools system in 1883. After several other name changes, building locations and curriculum variations, the emergent alumni, faculty and concerned citizens, with the help of the local "Baltimore Afro-American" newspaper campaigned for the "Negro High School" to have its own new building which was constructed in 1924-1925, on a city block at Carey and Baker Streets, in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Built of red brick with stone trim in the English Tudor/Gothic architectural style with all the features of a modern high school. With its now new title being named for the famous abolitionist/writer/ editor/statesman/political activist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the school moved from its older structure which although of beautiful heavy Romanesque/Renaissance Revival style brickwork which had originally been built a half-century earlier for the City's elite female Western High School, now it was to revert to the lower level of the newly established "junior high schools" system, which would be renamed for "Booker T. Washington" (1856-1915), for continued black students in the still segregated city schools system and would last another century almost with numerous renovations but noting its landmark architecture in the Druid Hill/Upton neighborhoods in old inner West Baltimore. new Dunbar High on the other east side of town also received an art deco style building by the early 1930s. At. the conclusion of the Great Depression of the '30s and World War II, a new building and name was also planned for the vocational school as the several other Vo-Tech high schools, like the older Boys and Samuel Gompers vocational high schools were reorganized, merged and realigned with the establishment of the two Vocational-Technical High Schools for the city with Carver Vo-Tech at Prestman Street on the west side and the newly merged old Boys and Samuel Gompers into a new Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School named for printer inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899), being built two years later in 1955 on Hillen Road, in the northeast area of Baltimore opposite Lake Montebello and the large campus water filtration plant complex with its Spanish-style architecture of industrial buildings with dark red bricks and green tile roofs from 1915.
