After a fire broke out at the vacant Emerson High School Saturday evening, the Gary Fire Department shared images showing large flames and smoke coming out of the top of the historic building.
Firefighters responded to the three-story school, located at 716 E. 7th Ave. at about 10 p.m., the department said on social media. Officials said the fire was extinguished overnight and no injuries were reported.
Firefighters from Merrillville and Munster helped control the blaze. The cause of the fire is under investigation, although arson investigators were at the scene, officials said.
The school on the city’s east side, closed since 2008 due to high maintenance costs, has been the site of multiple recent crimes. In July, three East Chicago men and a juvenile girl were arrested after shots were fired inside the building, while another fire broke out at the school a month earlier.
In 2015, police found a 17-year-old Chicago teen dead inside the blighted building, which opened in 1909.
The school is well-known for a four-day boycott in 1927, where hundreds of students demanded that administrators kick out 18 Black students. The Black students, who endured racist threats, eventually returned to the non-accredited Virginia Street school.
