Powell School

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Powell School
Powell School 2008.jpg
BCS small logo.png Birmingham City Schools
Years 1874–2001
Location 2331 6th Avenue North, (map)
Central City
Grades
Principal -
Enrollment - (-)
Colors
Mascot
Website birmingham.schoolinsites.com


The Powell School (originally the Free School) is the oldest surviving school in the Birmingham City Schools system. Although the current building was constructed in 1888, the school's history stretches back to the first school constructed on the site, the corner of 24th Street and 6th Avenue North, in 1874.

Powell School closed in 2001 and was used for some time as a teaching laboratory. It was standing vacant when it caught fire on the evening of January 7, 2011.

History

In early 1873 a group of citizens approached Colonel John T. Terry for help in establishing a free school to attract residents to return to the struggling new city. He, in turn, approached James Powell, president of the Elyton Land Company, and secured the use of a 100 by 190 foot lot, donated to the city on June 21, 1873, given "for the purpose of a free school for white children now residing in, and may reside hereafter in said city or within one-half mile of the limits of said city, and for no other purpose whatever. The school to be taught by white teachers." (To insure - 1954). Donated by trust, if the land were ever used for another purpose, the title would revert back to the Elyton Company or its successors.

Though many complained that the site was too far "out in the country", it was accepted and Terry and Charles Linn began raising funds to build a schoolhouse. Powell donated a large sum, but ultimately the city took out its first bond issue for $3,000, all of which were bought by Terry. After he was elected Mayor, Powell turned over his salary as Mayor of Birmingham ($1,330 per year) for the school's use, along with all fines collected through the Birmingham Police Court. One legend holds that he put up a suit of clothes as collataral for a second loan in order to cover the $4,795 needed to complete construction. In appreciation, the children of the school later presented Powell with a tailored suit of clothes.

Birmingham's first school

The four-classroom brick school building was opened formally on March 1, 1874 with 140 students and D. C. B. Connelly as principal. Terry served on the Board of Trustees along with George Thomas and J. J. Jolly.

Fees of about $1.50 per year were charged initially to help pay down debts, but the amount was reduced gradually and the "free school" eventually dropped the fees altogether through the 8th grade. It remained the only public school in the city until 1883, at which time other schools for lower grades were built and it became a high school. In that year John H. Phillips was hired as superintendent to modernize the city's educational efforts. He assigned each pupil a number, by which they were addressed in class. (Post - 1932)

The following year the Birmingham Board of Education was created to take over school operations from the Mayor and Board of Aldermen. Powell graduated its first senior class in 1885, with commencement exercises at O'Brien's Opera House.

Samuel Earle was one of those first students and remembered taking recess at "The Grove" which became East Park. He recalled throwing sticks into a bottomless sinkhole, hoping that they would float down the underground river and pop up at Elyton Spring. He also recalled George Ward's handsome lettering in his copybook and Goerge Hays winning a "most gentlemanly-student" competition sponsored by merchant A. B. Vandergrift.

1886 fire

In 1886 the original school building was damaged by fire and declared unsafe. Plans were made for a new 15-classroom structure on the same site. A $50,000 bond issue was drafted and an adjoining 50-foot lot was purchased. During construction, classes met at first in the Exposition Building on Capitol Park, then moved again to the Wright Building at 19th Street and 3rd Avenue North.

The Powell School as it appeared in 1908, with tower

The new school building was completed and opened on 1888. It was considered "the most modern and the best equipped elementary school in the South" at the time. (Waddle - 1969) The brick exterior was crowned by a series of stone gables. A central hexagonal room on each floor serves as an office while each classroom has large triple windows on two sides. It was named Powell School to honor Colonel Powell at Colonel Terry's suggestion. Mary Cahalan was named as the first principal of the new school.

In 1891 the high school students moved out of the Powell School and met in the Enslen Building on the site later occupied by the Ridgely Apartments (now the Tutwiler Hotel).

Addition

In 1941, following a fire at the Barker School, 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. Parent Oliver Steele countered that "downtown property isn't going to be worth a dime in a few years. It'll be just parking lots," and demanded that Barker be replaced on its previous site.

With $10,000 from a $7,000,000 bond issue passed in November 1945 a 50 by 190 foot lot adjacent to the school was purchased from three daughters of T. D. and Sarah Bradford, two of whom taught in city schools. The planned addition, housing a lunchroom, auditorium and boiler as well as classroom space for 52 additional pupils, was completed in 1951. At the same time the stairways in the older building were fireproofed and the lighting modernized. The cost was estimated at about $120,000.

The city's first classes for vision-impaired students were pioneered at Powell School. In the program disabled students would spend part of the day working with their own teachers in a dedicated resource room, but would join their sighted classmates for the remainder of the day, reading from braille editions of the same texts.

Renovations

In the 1960s there was talk of tearing down the old building, which was showing obvious signs of disrepair, but preservationists carried the day and in the summer of 1969 the brick exterior was sandblasted and the joints "rechinked" with new white mortar using $56,750 of state bond funds. (Waddle - 1969) In 1974 the building's future was again imperiled by the likelihood that most of its students would be relocated for the construction of the Red Mountain Expressway. Principal Gordon Starr made plans to convert one main-level classroom into a museum of education history in order to preserve the usefulness of the building. (Kennedy -1974) In 1976 Powell School was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In November 1980, fearing for the structural stability of the old building, Superintendent Wilmer Cody ordered classes moved to Phillips High School while a structural evaluation was undertaken. At the time, school board president Bettye Fine Collins indicated that the system would be better off ridding itself of an old structure requiring costly repairs.

Until 2001 the Powell School operated as Powell Elementary School. That spring it was closed and renovated for use as a teaching laboratory.

In 2009 Birmingham mayor Larry Langford proposed donating the building to the private Cornerstone School.

List of principals

References

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