Vacant Rosenwald school in Alabama

Mount Sinai School, Prattville Alabama

Date added: July 25, 2023 Categories: Alabama School

Front facade and west elevation; facing north (2001)

The Mount Sinai School was constructed in 1919 utilizing funds provided by the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund program in combination with public and private monies. According to the records in the Rosenwald School Building Fund papers at Fisk University, the school cost $1325.00 to build. The Rosenwald Fund provided $500, while the state contributed $300.00. African Americans raised the remaining $525.00. The school traces its origins to circa 1891, when a one-teacher program was instituted in the nearby Mount Sinai church. According to local tradition, a one-room frame building was eventually constructed in another location and utilized by students until it was destroyed in a storm, after which time the classes moved back into the church. When the new Mount Sinai building opened in 1919, the teaching staff increased to three. In 1949 a fourth teacher was added, and the following year the Parent-Teachers Association raised $500.00 to match county funds to complete the construction of the north classroom. With the school consolidation of the late 1960s, Mount Sinai was shut down in 1967 when the students were transferred to the Autauga County Training School at Autaugaville. That same year the Mount Sinai Community Association purchased the building for $800.00. Incorporated in 1973, the Mount Sinai Community Center continues to maintain ownership of the building.

The Mount Sinai School is a school building that was funded by the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund program. In operation from 1913 until 1937, the Rosenwald Fund assisted with the construction of some 5,358 educational buildings for African Americans in 15 southern States. The Rosenwald School Building Fund represents 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. Surviving Rosenwald School buildings, including the Mount Sinai School, are the last remaining vestiges of one of the most important educational construction projects ever undertaken in the United States. They also reflect African Americans' pursuit of learning and their struggle for educational opportunities in the segregated South.

The Mount Sinai School was constructed according to the designs of W.A. Hazel of the Department of Architecture at Tuskegee Institute. The plan utilized was Floorplan 20, a Two Teacher Community School found in Booker T. Washington's "The Rural Negro School Fund and its Relation to the Community". The Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund was one of the most important and ambitious school building projects ever undertaken in the United States. Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald were determined to provide up-to-date educational facilities for African Americans. These school buildings often incorporated industrial rooms, libraries, cloakrooms, heating stoves, and folding doors between rooms so that facilities could be used as community centers. So revolutionary were these mass-produced, standardized designs, that education officials soon began building white schools according to these plans as well. In 1928, one in five rural schools for blacks was a Rosenwald School. By the 1930s, these modern buildings had replaced thousands of old shanty schoolhouses. These educational structures set the standard, not only in regard to schoolhouse architecture, but in the construction, architecture, and maintenance of other structures in rural and nearby areas. While the school has had some alterations (addition of a north classroom, addition of bathrooms, and the extension of the industrial room), Mount Sinai is still easily recognizable as a Rosenwald plan and retains its original rural setting. Key design characteristics; room arrangement, materials, window configuration, specialty rooms such as the cloakroom, tell an important story about progressive views on modern school design. With the exception of an accessory building (the home economics cottage) at the former Autauga County Training School at Autaugaville, Mount Sinai is the last extant example of an original six Rosenwald Schools constructed in Autauga County.

Building Description

Dedicated in October of 1919, the Mount Sinai School is a one-story, "two-teacher" Rosenwald school building. Mt. Sinai was constructed according to the plans of W.A. Hazel (Floorplan No. 20,) as found in "The Rural Negro School Building and Its Relation to the Community", published in 1913 by Tuskegee Institute. It is located in a rural area approximately eight miles north of Prattville in the Mount Sinai community, on five acres of land adjacent to the circa 1949 Mount Sinai Baptist Church.

As Hazels's plan dictates, the building is aligned to face east and west to take advantage of natural light. The one-story, frame T-shaped building was originally comprised of two 24' x 32' classrooms with the 12' x 24' industrial arts room extending to the west. The industrial arts room was extended out by 14 feet in 1935, and in 1950 a third classroom (also measuring 24' x 32') was added to the north side of the building. The school is constructed on brick piers, with later concrete block infill used to enclose the foundation. Exterior walls are of weatherboard, while the gabled roof featuring exposed rafter ends is clad with asphalt shingles. The east (main) facade has five bays, with the centered forward-projecting gabled industrial room being the dominant feature. The industrial room is flanked by two single-leaf entrances to either side covered by shed roofs and supported by paired, Craftsman-style brackets. Although this room has recent 12/6 aluminum replacement windows, the remainder of the windows throughout the school are double-hung wooden 6:6 sashes arranged in banks in five. The windows on the 1950 addition are of a slightly smaller proportion than those of the original building.

Hazels' original interior plan of two main classrooms separated by a partition remains intact, as do the cloakrooms, although the north cloakroom was partially infilled by the construction of two interior bathrooms in the 1980s. The industrial arts room, accessed from both classrooms, has its original storage closet along the east wall. The floors, walls, and ceilings throughout the building (including those in the additions) are tongue and groove pine, although some sheetrock has been installed in the west room and a portion of the south room. Multi-paneled wooden doors are found throughout the interior. Many of the original desks and two pot-bellied stoves remain as well.