page_title: Eugene Sternberg
section_title: Buildings for education and cultural enrichment
hierarchical_section_title: Eugene Sternberg / Buildings for education and cultural enrichment
caption_attribution_description: English: Heritage High School, Littleton, Colorado, designed by Eugene Sternburg
context_page_description: Eugene Sternberg was an Austro-Hungarian born American architect known for his passionate commitment and contribution to contemporary/modernist architecture and town planning in Colorado and other Rocky Mountain states between 1950 and 1990. He designed over 400 building projects and subdivisions, many of them iconic examples of Modernist architecture. Since his focus was on improving the quality of life of the general population, the structures he built were beautiful, useful, and cost-effective. Most of his projects were in the category of social architecture: affordable homes, senior housing projects, public housing, hospitals, medical clinics, public schools, community colleges, community centers, churches, buildings for credit unions, labor unions, and headquarters offices for Rural Electric Associations. As a planner Sternberg designed a number of innovative housing subdivisions and master plans for college campuses, governmental complexes, county fairgrounds, and a number of small western cities.
context_section_description: The design of public schools, those institutions which educate and deeply influence our next generation of young men and women, was a matter of lively interest and constant research for architect Sternberg.  Throughout the years of his practice, starting with a small experimental primary school in Englewood in 1952, there were always one or more schools in the design process or under construction.  Almost 40 in all, these included many sizes of elementary, junior high and high schools, located in the Denver metro area (Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan, Jefferson County, Cherry Creek District) and in small towns throughout Colorado (Carbondale, Sterling, Craig, Steamboat Springs, Nucla), Nebraska (Sidney, Kimball, Crawford) and Wyoming (Lance Creek, Lusk).  Almost everywhere, in fact, except for the School District of the City and County of Denver. Sternberg was a fierce critic of the limitations placed on architects by Denver in the years he was designing schools.  He maintained that these prescriptions resulted in schools designed not for students, nor for teachers, but for janitors. It amused him that the only way a school of his design got into Denver was when the small College View School District, where he had done a large school addition, was annexed into the city.
  In 1961, Sternberg decided to move his office to Littleton where he was welcomed by Houston Waring, the influential editor of the local newspaper, The Littleton  Independent. His firm designed many buildings in Littleton, including  two of the most important educational projects of Sternberg's career, Arapahoe Community College and Heritage High School (Littleton, Colorado).
  Arapahoe Community College was a long time in the making, and Sternberg was involved from the start in its creative evolution. The State of Colorado' s preference was for buying virgin land on the outskirts of the town and developing a campus of one or two-story scattered buildings, but after considering 20 different sites, Sternberg's argument that it should be located in the heart of the Littleton  community won out.  A 51-acre site was developed as an urban renewal project. All the college's needs were met in one megastructure.  This design approach preserved the old trees on the site, provided adequate parking, and, Sternberg believed, would promote  more interaction between students and faculty of different disciplines. The building is of concrete in what is today described as the modernist style. As a community college, the facility has been highly successful.  Its design has been the subject of much debate, with some students enjoying it and others characterizing it unfavorably as "Sternberg's Slab." In recent years, a large, glass-filled entrance structure has been added with the intention of softening the original, spare design.
  Heritage High School, serving 2,000 students, was considered by Sternberg to be his best school design. It had a magnificent well equipped theater, a complete arts and crafts department, a spacious music department, a first-class library on two levels, and a number of informal meeting areas or "commons" throughout the building. The school was built on three levels, making use of the site's 35-foot slope. All floors were accessible from the outside by the handicapped.  The firm received an award for designing the first high school totally accessible to the handicapped.  Going against the prevailing standard that a school of this size needed 50 acres of land, Sternberg persuaded the School Board that he could accommodate all the school's outdoor needs on one-half of this acreage. He persuaded them to spend the savings on landscaping the entire site, with grass sod, sprinkler systems and  mature trees planted everywhere. The school was a marked contrast to the typical high schools of the time, which had a small green area in front and the rest of the land covered in gravel.
  Designing schools and colleges gave the Sternberg firm considerable experience in the planning of efficient, economical, user-friendly libraries.  This background proved valuable when 
caption: Heritage High School - Sternberg Family Collection.
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