By Angelina Munoz
After 59 years on the eastern side of the Dunning neighborhood, Wilbur Wright College moved its facilities to a brand-new campus in 1993 at the intersection of Narragansett and Montrose avenues.
For the past 31 years, the current campus has been at 4300 North Narragansett Avenue. However, Wright College started its mission to provide the first two years of a baccalaureate degree 90 years ago.
The former Wilbur Wright Junior College campus was established in 1934 at 3400 North Austin Avenue (now Chicago Academy High School).
Chicago Academy High School in 2024. (Photo credit: Angelina Munoz)
Julius Nadas, a mathematics professor, has worked at Wright College since the fall of 1976. He taught at the old campus and mentioned a couple of issues.
The building lacked sufficient capacity to hold everyone. “We were very crowded, we had no room for anything. There were a couple of classes that met in the bathrooms,” Nadas said.
He explained that the bathrooms had an outside space where people could go before entering the bathroom. “We had a class meet there once, it was horrible,” he expressed.
Additionally, the faculty members utilized the parking lot as alternative offices. “We put a couple of things out in the parking lot and we had our offices there. We were all over the place,” Nadas commented.
In 1988, Salvatore Rotella, former chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago(CCC), testified to the Chicago Tribune that the building “cannot accommodate the programs of a modern community college.”
The campus was the most used of the seven city colleges and it had enrolled more than 8,000 students, according to Rotella. CCC had rented space in other buildings to accommodate Wright College programs, he added.
Wilbur Wright College in 2024. (Photo credit: Angelina Munoz)
Finally, in 1993, Wright College moved to its current location. The new campus was significantly larger, with five acres of landscape, and parking in the back. “When we started to work in the new college, we had new equipment, new everything. That was wonderful,” Nadas said.
For the first two years, the campus featured medical technology to support its medical programs. “In the science building, we had classrooms equipped with X-ray machines,” said Victor Guerrieri, an alumnus of Wright Junior College and the current Director of Safety and Security.
The medical equipment was all removed and transferred in 1995 to the new Wright satellite campus Humboldt Park Vocational Education Center (HPVEC), which is located at 1645 North California Avenue.
Guerrieri stated that after relocating the equipment to Humboldt Park, those rooms were converted into the IT and math centers now located on the third floor of the Science building.
“This campus has been changing almost every year with something new to make it better for our students,” Guerrieri concluded.
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