Goodbye, Old Hodgson: After 50 Years, the Original Vo-Tech Comes Down in Newark

For five decades, it was where Delaware teenagers learned a trade — and this week, the excavators moved in.

The original Paul M. Hodgson Vocational Technical High School in Newark is being torn down. Drone photos from the campus show excavators pulling the old building apart, wall by wall, with piles of cinder block and twisted steel where classrooms and shops used to be. It is the final chapter for a building that was never even supposed to last this long — and the start of a new one for the school that grew up inside it.

Hodgson sits at 2575 Glasgow Avenue in Newark, part of the New Castle County Vocational Technical School District. Generations of Delaware families know it simply as Hodgson Vo-Tech, home of the Silver Eagles. For the students who went there, it was never just a school building. It was where they learned to do something with their hands, and where a lot of them figured out who they were going to be.

A school that was never supposed to be a full-time school

Hodgson opened in 1974 as a half-day, share-time vocational program for Newark High School students. That was the whole plan: students would spend part of the day at Newark High and part of the day at Hodgson learning a trade.

It did not stay that way. The program grew into a full-time high school in its own right, and for roughly 50 years it turned out welders and nurses, auto technicians and culinary graduates, carpenters and IT specialists, dental assistants and early-childhood educators — generations of Delaware kids who left with a skill in their hands and a diploma on the wall.

That is what makes the demolition photos hit so hard for alumni. This was not a building people just passed through. For a lot of students, Hodgson was the place where school finally clicked, because the work was real. You were not just reading about a trade in a textbook. You were in the shop, in the kitchen, under the hood, in the clinic, learning how to do the job.

The new Hodgson is already open

The school itself is not closing. That is the part a lot of people get wrong when they first see the teardown photos, and alumni were quick to correct it online: Hodgson was not shut down. It was rebuilt, on the same campus, right next door to the old building.

The new Hodgson is a roughly $217 million, 286,000-plus-square-foot building, built on what used to be the school’s athletic fields. It opened for students this fall, for the 2026–2027 school year, with a ribbon cutting on August 17, 2026. Superintendent Dr. Joseph Jones, Principal Dr. Christine Colihan, and Governor Matt Meyer were there for the opening.

Inside, the new building has 15 vocational shop areas — culinary arts, automotive technology, dental assisting, veterinary technology, advanced manufacturing, nursing, information technology and cybersecurity, welding, carpentry, early childhood education, and more — plus a 1,220-seat gymnasium, a 250-seat auditorium and theater, and interior courtyards.

It also has something the old building never had: a Sean’s Room, a dedicated mental-health space built with the SL24: UnLocke the Light Foundation. It is the second such room in a Delaware public school, and it opened in late September 2026.

Hodgson students helped build their own new school, too. Twenty-seven Hodgson students and two students from St. Georges worked co-op jobs on the construction site, putting in more than 20,000 hours alongside the crews.

Phase 2: the old building comes down

With the new school open and students settled in, the work moved to Phase 2: tearing down the old building to make way for new athletic fields and site improvements on the ground where it stood.

That is what is happening in the photos now — the Neuber Environmental Services excavators, the walls coming down in sections, the old gym wing and greenhouse complex included in the demolition work. A state asbestos notification for the project lists removal work in those areas running November 4 through December 31, 2026.

For anyone who drove past Glasgow Avenue for years, the sight is jarring. The building that anchored that corner for half a century is disappearing in a matter of weeks, and what is left behind is open ground, waiting for what comes next.

What alumni are saying

When photos of the teardown hit social media this week, former students came out in force. First State Update’s photo post on November 11 drew hundreds of reactions and more than 400 comments, overwhelmingly from alumni and staff — class years stretching from 1976 all the way to 2018.

The tone was nostalgic and mournful, but proud, too. People remembered their trades, their teams, their teachers, and everyday life inside those walls. Again and again, the same wish came up: they wished they could have walked through it one last time before the excavators arrived.

That is the thing about a vo-tech school. The memories are not just about classrooms. They are about the shop you spent half your day in, the instructor who taught you a trade you still use, the classmates you worked beside. For a lot of Hodgson graduates, that building is where their working life started.

A little piece of the old school keeps growing

Here is the part that stays with you: while the old building was coming down, a project engineer spotted a pothos plant growing in the original school’s vestibule garden. Before demolition, she took it home, cared for it, and started growing new plants from it to share with Hodgson staff.

A little piece of the original Hodgson keeps growing — in the new building, in the hands of the people who worked there.

The building is coming down. The memories are not. For everybody who walked those halls — from the first classes in the 1970s to the last ones to leave the old building this year — the old Hodgson will carry them forever.

What are your memories of the old Hodgson? What shop were you in, and what year did you graduate? Drop them in the comments — and if you have photos from your time there, we would love to see them. Hit us up with your requests at +1 302-357-9831.

Source: EDiS Company and First State Update