John Harvard Elementary

The Gothic space that I chooses is a school located in Queens. It is John Harvard Elementary it is located at 104-12 Springfield Blvd Queens Village N.Y. 11428. One day I was driving down the street and I saw something out the corner of my eye. When I first came across it I could have sworn that it was a hospital there. It was this extremely large gated area. The building takes up more than half of the block, and it is located on a hill alongside of an ordinary street.

The trees that are on the property make it look creepy especially when the trees are bare if there had of been more trees it would be exactly what the narrator described his first impression of the hospital for the insane. “Through this dank and gloomy wood we rode some two miles, when the Maison de Sante came in view”.  There is this long winding path that leads to the doors of the school. This reminds me of when in the story that narrator was approaching the asylum he stated that “ I thanked him, and, turning from the main road, we entered a grass-grown by-path, which, in half an hour, nearly lost itself in a dense forest, closing in the base of a mountain”. All it would need is a backdrop of Ice Mountains and a dense forest out in front and it would be just like what the narrator said.

When you come across it you can feel that you stepped into a different world and a different time. The building itself is very large so it takes up over half the block particularly with the front yard. The front door has a stone arch over it. The roof is shaped with gables and dormers. When you look around all the windows have bars on them. This makes it feel like there is no chance to escape. Although it wasn’t stated in the story that the window had any bars on them it would be assumed that an establishment for the insane would have them.

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I am going to say that John Harvard Grade School is uncanny, because it is a property that has modern home’s all around it. There are even businesses of modern time in the same location. It is very strange to me that an elementary school that looks like an asylum is in the middle of it all. Because it is a public elementary school I can’t walk in but by the shape of the school you can see that it must be huge inside. We all know what the inside of schools look like but just imagine if the classrooms where even smaller (like they aren’t already now) and all you see are metal beds. Out of all the schools that I have been in I find it to be like a maze. There are twist and turns, very long hallways that at some point turns out to be dead end. The John Harvard Elementary school reminds me so much of the story of The System of Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether.

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