One Room Schoolhouse in Alabama

New Hope Rosenwald School, Fredonia Alabama

Date added: July 26, 2023 Categories: Alabama School

Front facade and east elevation; facing north (2000)

The New Hope School building was constructed circa 1915 with funds provided by the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund program. J. A. Simmons and his wife Sue Simmons, a prominent wealthy white family, donated land for the erection of the school. The school was named New Hope School because of its location near New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. According to records in the Rosenwald School Building Fund papers in Fisk University, the New Hope School building cost $1,200.00 with the Julius Rosenwald Fund providing $400 to the total construction cost. African Americans raised $400 and the local white community contributed $400. The New Hope School continued in use until 1964 when the students were consolidated with the Five Points School, another Rosenwald school. The building was used as a home for an elderly couple from 1969-1978. Since that time the building has been empty. Locals hope to restore the building and use it for community-related purposes.

The New Hope School was constructed under the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund program. From 1913 to 1937, the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund helped finance over 5,358 school buildings, teachers' homes, and industrial buildings for African American education in fifteen Southern states. The Rosenwald School Building Fund was a benchmark in the history of black education, representing the most important philanthropic force that came to aid of African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. As a result of the Rosenwald Fund's initiatives, more black children went to school longer and with better-trained teachers in better-constructed and equipped schools. The school-building effort awakened the public school authorities and the general public to the need for more adequate educational provisions for African Americans.

New Hope School was constructed according to designs and specifications supplied by W. A. Hazel and the Department of Architecture, Tuskegee Institute. Built in circa 1915 according to Design #11 - a One Teacher School as found in Booker T. Washington's The Rural Negro School Fund and It's Relation to the Community, the New Hope building reflects the architectural plans and specifications provided by Tuskegee Institute to ensure the construction of a quality facility. The Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund was one of the most important and ambitious school building projects ever undertaken. Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald were determined to provide up-to-date educational facilities for African Americans. As such, these school buildings incorporated industrial rooms, libraries, cloakrooms, heating stoves, and folding doors between rooms so that facilities could be used as community centers. Plans dictated east/west orientation for maximization of natural light, window shades, sanitary privies, and interior paint schemes. So revolutionary were these mass-produced, standardized designs, that education officials soon began building white schools according to these plans as well. By 1928, one in five rural schools for blacks was a Rosenwald School. By the 1930s, these modem buildings had replaced thousands of old shanty schoolhouses. These school buildings set the standard not only in regard to schoolhouse architecture but they influenced the construction, architecture, and maintenance of other structures in rural and nearby areas. While the school has had some alterations in recent years (porch and interior partition), the school still reads as a Rosenwald plan and still remains in its original rural setting. Important design characteristics; room arrangement, materials, window configuration, specialty rooms such as a coat closet and kitchen, stoves, still remain and tell an important story about progressive views on modern school design. Nineteen Rosenwald schools were constructed in Chambers County; however, it is very unlikely that many remain.

Building Description

The New Hope School is a "one teacher" Rosenwald school building constructed according to Design No. 11, a One Teacher School as found in The Rural Negro School Building and It's Relation to the Community, published by Tuskegee Institute in 1913. W. A. Hazel drafted Design No. 11-A while teaching in the architecture department at Tuskegee Institute. Once the focal point of this African American community, the school building is situated in a clearing against a woody thicket on a four-acre site adjacent to the modern building housing the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church and a historic cemetery. A local informant and school alumni states that the clearing area was used as a playground and ball field. A well and two privies once stood behind the school in the thicket; however, both privies have collapsed.

The school is a one-story frame building resting on a foundation of brick piers. The exterior wall material is simple weatherboarding. The hipped roof is covered in standing seam metal. The building has a north-south orientation with the facade facing south.

Originally, the south side of the building featured a five-bay facade with paired six over six double hung sash windows located on the east and west sides of the south elevation. Small six-light windows were located on either side of the main entrance just beneath the roof line. The north elevation contains a single six over six double hung sash window and a band of six nine over nine double hung sash windows. The east elevation contains a band of four nine over nine double hung sash windows while the west elevation contains two small windows just below the roof line.

The entrance of the school on the south side has now been recessed to form a screened porch. This was done circa 1970 when the school was used as a residence. The porch area was created by opening up the area around the entrance and left small window and using the vestibule, left cloak room and part of the library; however, the main wall abutting these small spaces and the length of the classroom was left intact. The openings along this wall are also mostly intact; only one entrance was removed and made into a window (the opening most directly in front of the entrance stairs). The paired six over six windows on the east side of the elevation still remain and the ghost lines from the smaller windows can still be seen. Pieces of wood covering the western pair of windows have fallen off to reveal a portion of those windows.

Interior materials are mainly intact: tongue and grove wood floors, walls, and ceilings; original windows and surrounds; and doors. The interior room arrangement adheres to the plan provided in Design No. 11, consisting of a large 32' x 23' classroom and 15'6 x 23' workroom with few alterations. The two rooms were originally divided by bifold doors which are now enclosed by horizontally laid wood boards. A partition stretching north to south has been added in the classroom. Five small rooms were originally located along the south wall of the school. The vestibule and the two western rooms have been removed to create the porch. The original floors and ceilings and wall remain and the two outer doors are still intact. The middle door has been made into a window. The ghost lines from the walls separating the three rooms can still be seen. A cloakroom remains on the east side of the porch with two doors opening into the work room and the porch. The original kitchen is located in the southeast corner of the building with an opening into the work room. The original brick stove stack can be seen on the eastern wall of the kitchen and two other original brick stove stacks are located in the workroom and the classroom. One is placed in the northwest corner of the workroom and another in the northeast corner of the classroom. A ghost line from a blackboard exists on the west wall of the school.