Alternative Center for Excellence
| Alternative Center for Excellence | |
|---|---|
East (front) elevation and north profile, 2008
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| Address | |
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26 Locust Ave. Danbury, Connecticut 06810 United States |
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| Coordinates | 41°24′5″N 73°26′29″W / 41.40139°N 73.44139°W |
| Information | |
| School type | public alternative high school |
| Established | 1977 |
| Opened | 1896 |
| School district | Danbury Public Schools |
| Principal | Sandy Atanasoff |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrollment | 97 (2008) |
| Student to teacher ratio | 10.8 |
| Language | English |
| Campus size | 1.1 acres (4,500 m2) |
| Campus type | Urban |
| Communities served | Danbury |
| Website | danbury.k12.ct.us/aceweb/ace |
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Locust Avenue School
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| NRHP reference # | 85001162 |
| Added to NRHP | May 30, 1985 |
The Alternative Center for Excellence (ACE), formerly the Alternative Center for Education, is located in the former Locust Avenue School at 26 Locust Avenue in Danbury, Connecticut, United States. It is an alternative high school within the city's school system, meant for at-risk students.
The building itself, a brick Romanesque Revival structure, was designed by architect Warren R. Briggs in 1896, and later featured in his book Modern American School Buildings. For many years it was an elementary school, and a laboratory school where recent graduates of the state's teacher training schools were sent to hone their skills with actual students before going to their ultimate teaching jobs.
Today it is the last nineteenth-century school building remaining in Danbury, and one of the few remaining laboratory school buildings in the state. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
The school occupies a 1.1-acre (4,500 m2) lot at the north end of the block formed by Locust, Ninth and Roberts avenues in an otherwise residential neighborhood. Western Connecticut State University, formerly the Danbury State Normal School where the teachers at the school were trained in its laboratory era, is a block to the west. Downtown Danbury is a mile (1.6 km) to the west-southwest, and Danbury Hospital is to the northwest along Locust.
The terrain is level. Paved parking lots abut the school on the south and west. The entire site is landscaped, with trees planted shortly after the school was opened to honor veterans of the Spanish–American War.
The building itself is a 60-by-86-foot (18 by 26 m) two-story structure of common bond orange-red brick on a raised basement topped by a slate-shingled hip roof. Modillioned galvanized sheet metal is along the eaves. At the top of the roof is an orange wooden cupola with octagonal rounded roof supported by round arches with keys and surrounded by a balustrade with chamfered newels and pointed finials. A stone water table runs around the building at the level of the top of the entrance steps.
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