Main High School, Rome Georgia

Date added: October 19, 2023 Categories: Georgia School

Main High School building with new high school building (1958), left looking northeast (2001)

Rome City Schools was established in 1883. That year, the city began construction of the first school in the new school system. The school was dedicated for white students only. The city's African-American students were taught in rented office space for ten years before the Rome City Schools Board of Trustees approved funds for the construction of the Main Colored School for Rome's African-American students. The two-story Italianate-style building was named Main Colored School because it was the principal school for Rome's black students. The school taught grades one through eight from 1894 until 1925. By 1930, the curriculum was extended to eleven years of schooling. The twelfth grade was not added until the 1952-1953 academic year. By 1932, the school had come to be known as Main High School.

In 1934, the Board of Education applied for federal funds to build a new classroom building. In a letter from June 2, 1934, J. Glover McGhee, chairman of the Rome Board of Education, wrote: "...in the Negro School Building, located in North Rome, there are not sufficient classrooms for the number of pupils enrolled. There are ten classrooms at this location, in which twelve grades are being housed at the present time. Not only are several of these grades badly over-crowded, but four of them are on part time, each being given only half of the regular school day, because of lack of classrooms. Under these unfortunate conditions, it is impossible to give just and proper training to the pupils enrolled."

The city's request for federal funds was denied and so the city council responded by approving $300 for the purchase of land behind the existing school and $11,000 for the construction of a new classroom building to ease the overcrowded conditions. The new building, called the Main High School building, was built by day laborers under the supervision of R. L. Townsend. The one-story, brick Colonial Revival-style building featured two classrooms on each side of a double-loaded corridor.

In response to persistent overcrowding, the city authorized the construction of two additional classrooms and an auditorium. Atlanta architect Odis Clay Poundstone designed the addition in 1938. The addition was completed the next year by the contractor J. P. Roberts. The school board furnished the new classrooms with desks that had been used in the city's white high school. Electric lights were installed at Main High School in 1940, three years after they had been reinstalled in the white high school. In 1962, the original school building that was built in 1894 was destroyed by fire.

As the only public school for black students in the Rome area, enrollment increased dramatically after World War II with over 1,200 students by the early 1960s. The Main High School served both city and nearby county residents under an agreement in which the city paid for land and the construction of a new high school building and the county provided funds for teacher salaries. The new high school, which was completed in 1958, was part of a building campaign by the city in the last years of segregation. Six buildings were constructed between 1955 and 1963, including the gymnasium (c.1955); high school annex (c.1955); high school building (1958); elementary school annex no. 1 (c.1962); elementary school building (1963); elementary school annex no. 2 (1963). After the construction of the new high school in 1958, the Main High School building served as the junior high school and its auditorium was subdivided into three classrooms.

Main High School is distinguished from other segregated schools in Georgia because it offered a complete curriculum, rather than the standard program for African Americans that emphasized only vocational skills. Main High School provided Rome's black students with courses in English, history, science, and math. Music, which was also part of the standard academic curriculum for the city's white schools, had been taught at Main High School as early as 1919. The official band program began in 1948. Many of its graduates continued their academic careers. By the time of its tenth reunion, 80 percent of the class of 1935, for example, had obtained a college degree.

Desegregation of Rome's public schools began in 1966 with 200 African-American students (county residents) from Main High School transferring to the previously all-white county high school. Beginning in the 1967-1968 academic year, all students were allowed to attend the school of their choice under the Freedom of Choice Desegregation Plan. At the beginning of the 1968-1969 school year, the ninth and tenth grades at Main High School transferred to the East and West Rome High Schools. The remaining grades transferred the following year. With the entire student body of Main High School integrated into the previously all-white East and West Rome High Schools, Main High School closed in 1969.

The Main High School campus currently serves numerous education-related functions. The Main High School building is used for storage by the school system. The 1958 high school building serves as the Rome Transitional Academy and the Rome City Schools Technology Center. The gymnasium is used by the Boys and Girls Club of Rome and the Main Elementary School continues to serve as an elementary school.

The Main High School is a compact school campus with the oldest building, the Main High School building built in 1934, near the top of a hill and most of the later buildings from the 1950s and 1960s laid out below on the steep north and west slopes. In 1894, the city of Rome established the Main High School as the only public school available to the city's African-American students. The campus continued to serve the city's blacks through the 1960s, with most of its educational buildings having been built during the last years of segregation. The school closed in 1969.

Main High School is significant in the area of social history and black ethnic heritage at the local level because for 75 years the Main High School campus served as the only public school available to Rome's African-American students. The so-called "Jim Crow" laws dictated that in public places blacks and whites used separate facilities. These included separate entrances and seating areas, restrooms and water fountains, seating on buses, and separate public schools. Facilities for African Americans were nearly always inferior to the accommodations made for whites. Segregation affected nearly every aspect of the public life in cities, small towns, and rural counties throughout the South.

After segregation ended with successes won by blacks during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, barriers separating whites from blacks were removed or converted to other purposes. Within a few decades, evidence of segregation in public places had mostly disappeared. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signage is especially rare. Public schools built in Georgia before the 1960s are among the few building types that retain physical vestiges of segregation because they were dedicated to either African-American or white students. Black and white students never attended the same schools before desegregation beginning in the middle 1960s.

In the broadest sense, Main High School was similar to other racially segregated schools in Georgia, which had inferior facilities than those provided to white schools. Main High School suffered constant overcrowding. Less than twenty years after the auditorium was built it had to be subdivided to provide needed classroom space. Seven new buildings were constructed between 1955 and 1963 to ease overcrowding and improve the school's facilities. Main High School, however, is distinguished from other segregated schools in Georgia because it offered a complete curriculum, rather than the standard program for blacks that emphasized only vocational skills. Main High School provided Rome's blacks with courses in English, history, science, math, and music that were also part of the standard academic curriculum for the city's white schools.

The Main High School building, built in 1934, is typical of schools built in the Colonial Revival style throughout Georgia in the decades before World War II. It is a plain building, rectangular in shape with a low hip roof. The wood-frame building is covered with red brick veneer and trimmed in white-painted wood trim. There are few stylistic elements, except for the small pedimented front porch. The six-over-six-light sash windows are arranged in single and triple windows across the front and rear facades. The interior is similarly plain with wood floors and ceilings and plaster walls. Beaded wainscoting is located throughout the school and the doors and windows feature molded surrounds. The highly intact interior includes historic spaces, such as classrooms, offices, bathrooms, and coat closets and education-related features, such as blackboards.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the city built six new buildings at the Main High School in the International Style of architecture. In the United States, the International Style was largely a post-World War II phenomenon. This is especially true for Southern states, such as Georgia, which remained devoted to classicism well into the 1950s. Rich's Store for Men in Atlanta, designed by the Atlanta firm Stevens and Wilkinson in 1951, is considered the first major International Style building in Georgia. Its Broad Street facade, a five-story glass curtain wall, is characteristic of the International Style and influenced other architects in Georgia. Faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta at the middle of the 20^th Century, such as Harold Bush-Brown, J. H. Gaily, and Paul Hefernan, reshaped the Tech campus in the International Style and trained a generation of architects who designed modern buildings in Atlanta and throughout the South.

By the late 1950s, International Style buildings had become more common in Georgia, both in major urban centers and in small towns in rural counties. Many builders embraced the style for its economical use modern materials, simple massing, and lack of ornament but neglected important lessons advocated the master's of the Modern Movement, such as craftsmanship, proportion, purity of form, and context. This is especially true for developers of small-scale buildings built in the state's rural areas. In many Georgia communities, the first modern building was often a public building, such as a post office, county building, or school. After World War II, new classroom buildings, gymnasiums, libraries, and annex buildings were built across the state because of federal assistance for the construction of educational facilities and because Georgia consolidated its schools at the county level, often resulting in the construction of new school buildings that could accommodate the increased numbers of students. These buildings were often built in the International Style with simple rectangular forms, brick walls, large banks of metal-framed windows, flat roofs, and no ornament of any kind. In many cases, flat-roofed breezeways connect modern buildings with other campus buildings or provide sheltered places for students to wait for rides.

The International Style buildings that were built between 1955 and 1963 at the Main High School campus are typical of educational buildings constructed throughout the state during the third quarter of the 20^th Century. The buildings represent many of the fundamental principles of modernism, such as plain massing composed of simple geometric forms, abstract and asymmetrical design, the use of modern materials, and the lack of references to past architectures styles, or ornament of any kind. The modern Main High School buildings are one-story, square- or rectangular-shaped, with flat roofs. The high school, built in 1958, features the most high-style design elements of all the campus buildings. Its main entrance is signified by an abstract arrangement in which a tall brick wall is set perpendicular to the main facade. The brick wall supports a reinforced concrete slab that forms the covered entrance porch. In addition, the north wall is glazed with banks of windows set in metal frames. Large expanses of glass are characteristic of International Style buildings and made possible by the use of modern materials, such as steel framing. Glass window walls were also well suited to school buildings because they provided the classrooms with ample natural light.

Site Description

The Main High School is a school campus built for Rome's African-American students on the north bank of the Etowah River east of downtown Rome. Rome is a medium-sized industrial city in northwest Georgia. The campus includes the Main High School building that was built in 1934 and a series of International Style buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate the increasing student enrollment. The campus is laid out on the west side of large hill. The Main High School building near the top overlooks the later buildings, which were placed randomly on the slope below. Because the complex grew so quickly on sloping land and without a master plan, there is no symmetry or axial layout of the buildings, no clarity of circulation, and little open space for outdoor gatherings. Most of the campus is grass and the few trees on the property are located on the north side near the 1958 high school building.

The Main High School building, built in 1934, is a one-story, brick, Colonial Revival-style that was built on the top of a hill behind the 1893 school building, which is no longer extant. The Main High School Building is clad in red brick veneer and trimmed with wood painted white. The long rectangular-shaped building is covered with a low hip roof punctuated with seven brick chimneys. There are few stylistic elements, except for the small pedimented front porch. The six-over-six-light sash windows are arranged in single and triple windows across the front and rear facades.

The interior plan as built in 1934 featured four classrooms on each side of a double-loaded corridor. Offices were located in front along the entrance corridor and restrooms were placed at each end of the building. Most classrooms included coat closets. The interior was finished with wood floors and ceilings and plaster walls. Beaded wainscoting is located throughout the school and the doors and windows feature molded surrounds. Blackboards survive in most classrooms.

In 1938, Atlanta architect Odis Clay Poundstone designed two additional classrooms and an auditorium that doubled the size of the building. The addition, built along the south side of the main block, was completed the next year and is similar in style and materials to the original design. It includes entrances at each of the corners. The northernmost entrances, which provided direct access to the auditorium lobby, are recessed behind brick polychrome arches. The two south-end entrances are each sheltered by a small, bracketed stoop. Due to subsequent overcrowding, the stage and proscenium at the south end of the auditorium were removed in the late 1950s and the space was subdivided to form three classrooms. This reconfiguration of the auditorium remains extant.

The Main High School and auditorium addition were the last buildings constructed on the campus until a spate of new modern buildings were built between 1955 and 1963 to accommodate the dramatically increasing student enrollment. These one-story International Style buildings, built nearly twenty years after the Main High School building, contrast sharply with the older Colonial Revival-style classroom building.

Some of the earliest International Style buildings were built near the Main High School building at the top of the hill. The high school annex, built in c.1955, is a T-shaped building with red brick veneer, a flat roof, and large windows openings that have been filled with concrete block. There is no architectural ornament on the high school annex.

The high school, built in 1958, is the largest International Style building in the complex, although it is banked into north side of the hill so from the uphill Main High School building its roof is visible below grade. The long, rectangular-shaped high school is also the most stylish of the International Style buildings on the campus. Its main entrance is signified by a tall brick wall set perpendicular to the main facade. The brick wall is joined to a reinforced concrete slab that forms the covered entrance porch. The north wall is glazed with banks of windows set in metal frames. Like the other buildings, the high school is clad with red brick veneer and has a flat roof but no ornament.

The brick gymnasium, built in c.1955, features a bow-arched roof and brick pilasters between the large metal-framed windows. The lobby on the north side of the gymnasium features a flat roof cantilevered on the three sides with a flat-roofed entrance porch.

The elementary school annex no. 1, built in c.1962, is an L-shaped building located in the center of the campus. Like the other buildings, it is one-story with red brick veneer, and no ornament. The slight pitch of its roof is visible from the north side.

The elementary school, built in 1963, is located at the foot the hill and is irregularly shaped with red brick veneer and a flat roof.

The elementary school annex no. 2, built in 1963, is an L-shaped building constructed of blond-brick veneer with a flat roof. It is located adjacent to the elementary school.

Four buildings on the Main High School campus were built after desegregation. The Main Elementary School building is located in the northwest corner of the campus. It is built of brick with segmental arches on the north and east sides and a metal hip roof. The remaining buildings are two temporary trailers located between the elementary school and the elementary school annex no. 2 and a small wood storage shed that is located on the south side of the elementary school annex no. 2.