Well, hello my followers. If there was ever a tour, I did not know what to expect when I signed up for it, this was it. David Collins from Hamilton Stern hooked us up with the tour for the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School on March 19,2026 @ 1069 Joesph Ave. When he described to me the project and still being under construction, I thought, “What the hey, let’s do it”. After booking the tour and not sure what to expect, I was a little nervous as to how this may go, will it be great or a bust? Those of you who missed it….so sad. It was most excellent!!!
We checked in for the tour and got the low down on the construction project. As we stood in the lobby area, a crew was working on the gym floor coating, something to watch, never knew how much went into the job. From there we started the walk through the building entering the cafeteria noticing all the utilities going into this space, the skylight and learning about the challenges Hamilton Stern had withing the area. Moving on to the hallways we learned of different elevation change challenges and the updated classrooms. Keeping the material in house is a full-time job for a person to continuously relocate all the material from room to room as rooms become the next hot spot to work. As we made our way through the old church, reviewing the layout, we got to the main cathedral, fully reworked to fit the school’s needs but keeping the nostalgia and craftmanship history intact. Some of the woodwork and molds had to be remade to repair or replace damaged or missing items. I will say the carpenters did fantastic work!! We then made our way down to the basement, under an old church and learned about foundation repairs and support, concrete pours and all the new equipment for HVAC. What contractors removed, repaired and installed new with no straightforward way to get into the basement…. quite the story. We then moved to the tippy top floor that overlooked the cathedral and learned about the crawl space above, repairing the old structure and finding ways to provide HVAC and other utilities to that floor. This is an impressive spot to hold any event you want. On our way back out, we passed again through the newly renovated cathedral and checked out things we did not see the first time through.
At the end of the day, we gathered at the local brewery, the Genny Brew House, for dinner and a few drinks. It was great to see a number of fresh faces in the crowd and when asked what they thought of the tour, all loved it. I was able to talk with some, they mentioned doing more tours with the group and I hope they do.
On to the next tour.
