Henley School
The Henley School was a Birmingham city school located on the northeast corner of 17th Street and 6th Avenue North near West End Park (on the present site of the Alabama Power Company parking deck).
The school was founded in November 1883 as the West End School or West End Grammar School. It was renamed later that decade in honor of Birmingham's first Mayor, Robert Henley.
After the Barker School burned in 1941, Parent-Teacher Association president Harry Singler labelled Powell and Henley Schools as "firetraps" and suggested that the board tear them down and replace all three with a single, modern combined school in a central location, presumably downtown near the existing Powell School site, but eventually the insurance settlement was used to expand the Seventeenth Avenue School instead.
On Palm Sunday, April 7, 1963 a group of 2,000 marchers were stopped near the school and ministers John Porter, Nelson Smith and A. D. King immediately knelt in prayer. Twenty-six of the marchers were arrested as onlookers were dispersed with police dogs.
Principals
- Annie Provost and Kate Knox, 1883
- George Brewer, 1884
- Albert Jonas
- J. B. Dell
- Frank Roof, -1897
- Charles A. Brown, 1897-1907
- W. C. Griggs, 1907-
- J. M. Burnett
References
- City Directory of Birmingham and Gazetteer of Surrounding Section for 1884-5 (1884) Volume II. Atlanta, Georgia: Interstate Directory Company
- Cruikshank, George H. (1920) History of Birmingham and Its Environs: A Narrative Account of Their Historical Progress, Their People, and Their Principal Interests 2 volumes. Chicago, Illinois: Lewis Publishing Company. - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections