Hyer Elementary

Hyer Elementary

3920 Caruth Boulevard (Highland Park)

In 2015, the Highland Park ISD passed a bond for the replacement of three significant historic schools, Bradfield Elementary School – 4300 Southern Avenue (Highland Park), University Park Elementary School – 3505 Amherst Avenue (University Park), and Hyer Elementary School – 3920 Caruth Boulevard (Highland Park). The three schools were deemed inadequate to meet the needs of the growing school-aged population of the Park Cities and were targeted for much larger schools out of character for the neighborhoods they were located in.

Both the 1925 Bradfield Elementary School and the 1928 University Park Elementary School were designed by the architectural firm of Lang & Witchell and have been demolished to make way for new massive schools on the same site. Both brick schools featured similar plans and were designed in the Spanish Revival style with added Rococo detailing such as monumental main entrances with elaborate curves, scrolls, shells, and shields adorned with fleurs-de-lis.

Hyer Elementary School, which opened in 1949, is last remaining of the three and an excellent example of Mark Lemmon’s historicist architecture styled in the Georgian Revival aesthetic. The main entrance features a classically-inspired pediment, supported by original cast iron columns with lace detailing. The façades feature decorative hexagonal windows and nine-over-nine double-hung windows with prominent central keystones in the decorative brick headers. The school is scheduled for demolition in the summer of 2019 to be replaced with a much more massive school out of scale for the neighborhood as was done at the Bradfield and University Park sites.

UPDATE: The school was demolished in the summer of 2019 for the construction of a new larger school on the same site.