Bok

This guide to Bok in Philadelphia traces the rise and fall of Bok Technical High School, a 1938 WPA-funded vocational school built for three thousand students to learn trades like welding, wiring, and cooking. It follows the decline that left the building nearly empty by 2011 and the 2013 school board vote that shut it down along with twenty-two other Philadelphia schools. After two locked, silent years, a small real estate firm bought the building and made an unusual choice about what to keep. Stand in the old welding bay, where the ventilation still works and the wood shop still smells of sawdust.