Abigail Vare is Officially For Sale, Open House Scheduled for May 20th

Abigail Vare School has officially been put up for sale for the hefty price of $2.5m. The school district sold eight of the vacant school buildings last March for less than $30m and announced this week that 20 more buildings will be sold, this time with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) at the helm.

The buildings start at $700k and go all the way up to the astronomical price of $15m for William Penn High School on North Broad Street. Vare is the second smallest building square footage wise at 54,000 sq. ft. but the is listed as the fifth priciest out of the 20 properties up for sale. After all, many of these vacant school buildings are located on a landmark park like Dickinson Square and smack-dab in the middle of a burgeoning neighborhood like Pennsport.

Through their new website, www.phlschoolsales.com, the PIDC will look to offload the properties as soon as possible in order to raise the necessary funds to help ease the school district’s financial crisis, according to Philly.com. Superintendent William Hite and School Reform Commission Chair Bill Green testified to City Council on Monday that the district is $261m short.

As you can see from the listing, the open house is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20th starting at 9am.

The school was apparently added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Here are a few wonderful pictures of Abigail Vare School over the years. All pictures are via PhillyHistory.org:

From 1906

From 1927

From 1927, Morris Street in the background

From 1927, from Morris Street - note the trolley tracks

Here is one I recently posted to Instagram: