Wiley H. Bates High School in Annapolis, Maryland, a cultural landmark that sat vacant for more than 20 years, has been reinvented as Wiley H. Bates Heritage Park, a development incorporating housing for low-income seniors, community services for seniors and young people, and a museum of the school and its community. Bates School, which opened in 1933, was the city’s first freestanding secondary school for African Americans and was named after a local man who was born into slavery and later became one of Annapolis’s wealthiest citizens.
Just one year before Albert Friedman of Friedman Properties purchased the Medinah Temple–Tree Studios complex, it appeared on the World Monuments Fund’s list of 100 most-endangered sites. At the time, the cultural landmark was under threat from encroaching high-rise development, but a mix of innovative adaptive use and financing plans saved it from demolition. Today, Medinah Temple–Tree Studios has become a vibrant commercial complex with 165,000 square feet (15,329 m2) of home furnishing–themed retail space and 58,300 square feet (5,416 m2) of office/studio space geared toward artists and other creative professionals.
