On May 17, we celebrated a major milestone in the construction of the new Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts! More than 300 people gathered on the fourth floor of the new downtown campus construction site to celebrate its topping out.
The topping out ceremony is a construction tradition signifying that the last beam is in place and the structure has reached its highest point. Principal Dr. R. Scott Allen gave the order for the crane operator to raise an 8-foot evergreen tree to the roof of the building, commemorating the end of this construction phase.
Kinder HSPVA’s topping out brought together McCarthy’s construction team, subcontractors, and craft workers; project architects from Gensler; HSPVA faculty; members of the HISD Board of Trustees and the HSPVA Friends Board of Directors; and HSPVA principals past and present: Dr. Allen, Dr. Herbert Karpicke, and Annette Watson. Mariachi and Vocal students performed for the attendees. Theirs marked the very first performances at the new Kinder HSPVA!
“Kinder HSPVA is going to be amazing,” said Dr. Allen. “This facility will provide the spaces our academic and arts programs deserve.”
HSPVA Friends founder and former Dance Department Chair Mary Martha Lappe also attended the topping out ceremony. “I’m so happy to have been a part of this community of arts educators, aspiring young artists, and enlightened parents and alumni since the school’s inception in 1971,” she said. “It’s been a marvelous 45 years, and the school’s future is indeed very bright and promising.”
Read more about the topping out ceremony here.
Click here to check out photos from the event.
The new campus is on track to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2018. HSPVA Friends is working to ensure that the downtown campus has all of the features our talented students need to excel in their crafts. Those features include soundproof music rooms, an orchestra pit lift, and a sprung dance floor. Click here to learn more about the new campus, the HSPVA Friends capital campaign, and how you can help our students! To see how the new building is shaping up, check out our real-time webcam!
