Sunlight pours through large windows in studio spaces, classrooms, and hallways at the newly re-modeled Duke Ellington School of the Arts, providing an extra dose of energy to the students who will practice and perform their crafts at the prestigious public high school in Georgetown.

After a three-year renovation that went $100 million over budget, nearly 600 students will flood into building on Wednesday.

Seniors, who will enter the space for the first time since freshman year, will see a transformation that includes state-of-the-art dance and art studios, jazz and percussion labs, rehearsal spaces, green rooms, and a rooftop terrace.

The school’s freshly painted walls are mostly white with black accents. The floors in the cafeteria are inspired by piano keys, paying homage to iconic musician and composer Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, a D.C. native who gained a national profile for his 50-year career in jazz.

Constructed in 1898 as Western High School, the building had already received three renovation and additions since it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. But this major overhaul has been in the works for about seven years, as city officials work to modernize crumbling schools across the city.

Officials broke ground in 2014 and the D.C.’s Department of General Services has overseen the project, which includes 100,000 square feet of new spaces that combine old infrastructure and modernized fixtures.

Suspended in the center of the building is an oval-shaped structure called “the egg.” It has an “artistic impression,” said JocCole Burton, chief project delivery officer at DGS, during a tour of the school.

The tip of the egg begins outside of the building. It’s bottom sits above the school’s lower-level cafeteria. As they walk the halls, students may be challenged by the egg to think about creativity and varying perspectives, Burton said.

Perhaps its greatest feature, though, lies inside. The egg is a shell for an 800 seat theater with an orchestra pit and lift, stage trap, lighting catwalks, 148 speakers, and high-performing acoustics.

“The view from center stage is amazing, I don’t know how many other performing arts schools that have a stage like this with a trap door, so you can imagine what theatrical productions will be like in this school,” Burton said.

During their tenure, Ellington students undergo rigorous training to become professionals in dance, instrumental music, literary media and communications, museum studies, technical design and production, theater, visual arts, or vocal music.

The school’s alumni include comedian Dave Chappelle and Grammy-nominated, multi-instrumentalist Christylez Bacon.

Since its inception in 1974, Ellington has been the only D.C. public school that combines intensive arts training with college-preparatory academics. So while new orchestra recording halls have the technology for students to connect with music conductors across the globe, new science rooms allow students to learn and experiment in more innovative ways.

As Michelle Baskin, chair of the science department, unpacked her classroom, she explained how pre-renovation labs had “decorative holes,” meaning sinks didn’t drain and faucets didn’t turn on.

She said even the temporary locations where classes have taken place for the past three years are better than what she had before. “We were in the nicest trailers I’d ever seen in my life, but they were still trailers,” she said, adding that the new school building is the step up that she’d been preparing her students for.

“The new equipment we have for physics is a game changer,” Baskin said, adding that the physics teacher “had to spend the entire summer rewriting the curriculum for all of the stuff that they’re getting there … same thing with the anatomy teacher.”

She said the best part about coming back into the school is that she’s no longer separated from other teachers, who were placed at two temporary locations near the U Street Corridor.

“I have missed my colleagues, so to all be back together again is just the best thing ever,” she said, adding that because everyone will be “intermingled” in the new building, students will also get a chance to see that teachers have their own bonds, which will create “a much greater environment.”

While it’s ending now, the seven-year road to creating this oasis has not been an easy one—especially for city officials who’ve expressed concerns about the project’s budget as recently as last month.

When officials proposed the school’s renovation in 2012, estimated costs were set at $71 million. But the price tag of the modernization ballooned to $178 million, causing D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson to release a report in 2016 detailing how DGS failed to provide adequate information to the D.C. Council so plans would be clear and concise from the onset.

The traditional way to go about building improvements is “design, bid, build,” Patterson said. The District’s process though, was out of order, she said, pointing out out that, although demolition had begun, the final cost of the school’s construction was up in the air.

DGS’ Burton confirmed as much during the tour when asked about the budget discrepancies. She said that the initial budget of $71 million was based on general education facilities specs. But DGS later held a design competition which called for additional square footage, kicking up the renovation costs substantially. She said at this point though, the project should be completed at $165 million, which is technically “under budget” compared to the highest estimate of $178 million.

When the historic school finally opens its doors next week, it will mean just as much to current students and staff as folks who walked the halls decades ago.

Shuyinthia Farley-Hembry, who celebrated her 20th high school reunion last year, told DCist that she remembers her alma mater as “a magical place where talent, love of expression, and discipline were encouraged to thrive.”

“It’s an institution where family was fostered,” she said, adding that she’s still in contact with most of her classmates from Ellington’s class of ‘96 who “support each other with a loyalty and pride like no other.”

Even though she and other student violinists had to deal with old radiators and fluctuating building temperatures that caused their “strings to tighten up and wood to expand,” they were “a resilient group,” she said, “so we adjusted well.”

Farley-Hembry said she hopes students who enter the new building on Wednesday will “embrace it as home, protect it as their own, and honor the commitment and sacrifices made to make it what it is.”

This post has been updated with the original project budget as $71 million, not $71,000 and the projected completed budget as $165 million, instead of $165,000.