Fairview School closer to being restored
CAVE SPRING, Ga. — After years of fundraising and efforts to preserve a piece of the past, Fairview School, a school building and small campus that once was the only place to educate African-American children in the area, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Joyce Perdue-Smith, CEO of the Fairview-E.S. Brown Heritage Corporation, was ecstatic when she got the news and said it came after at least three years of hard work and lobbying.
“Historic preservation, oh my gosh, is an animal all to itself,” Perdue-Smith said.
The nomination for Register status was also supported by the city of Rome.
Just one building remains on the original campus, a circa-1945 first grade classroom building that sits on an approximately 3.5acre campus just east of downtown Cave Spring. The site also includes the remnants of other buildings originally constructed in the mid-1920s.
The initial buildings were constructed in the mid-1920s with the assistance of the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization founded by Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington. Three additional buildings were constructed on the campus in the 1940s.
Fairview School was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as significant in the areas of ethnic heritage (AfricanAmerican) and education, as a rare example of an entire African American school campus constructed before the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. It is the only remaining property of this type surviving in Cave Spring. The property was deeded to the Floyd County Board of Education by local residents.
According to the Historic Preservation Division, the school also has an association with the prominent Chubb family of Cave Spring. The Chubb family is significant because of their rarity and self-sufficiency as a free black family in Georgia prior to the Civil War. The Fairview School expanded to accommodate a growing student body, and three additional buildings were constructed on the campus in the 1940s. Of those, only the first-grade classroom building exists today; however, the foundations and chimney remnants of the three other classroom buildings remain, and their sites have produced material significant to understanding the development and use of the property as a whole.
Additionally, the property is significant for historic archaeology due to the property’s ability to reveal information significant about the past. Artifacts recovered from the property include historic ink and medicine bottles, students’ supplies, and building materials that can inform archaeologists about the buildings and the daily lives of the student body.
The National Register of Historic Places is the country’s official list of historic buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts worthy of preservation. The National Register provides formal recognition of a property’s architectural, historical, or archaeological significance. It also identifies historic properties for planning purposes, and ensures that those properties will be considered in the planning of state or federally assisted projects. National Register listing encourages preservation of historic properties through public awareness, federal and state tax incentives, and grants. Listing on the National Register does not place obligations or restrictions on the use, treatment, transfer, or disposition of private property.
Perdue-Smith said people have been asking her for several years when the group was going to do something with the building and her response was always that they couldn’t do much of anything until the building was listed on the Register.
She said Fairview’s listing on the Register opens the door for all kinds of potential grant funding.
“What we need is what they call brick and mortar grants to fix the building,” Perdue-Smith said. “There are a lot of large foundations that want to give but they want you to have that National Register listing before they do it.”
She said the goal is to restore the one building as closely as possible to its original look. She estimates that work at the Cave Spring site will cost at least $200,000.
Perdue-Smith also said the Georgia Department of Tourism has come on board as a partner to help promote the school, for both tourism and educational purposes.
The Fairview School joins two dozen other sites in Cave Spring that are listed on the Register. Sandra Lindsey, director of Cave Spring Downtown Development, said once the restoration work on the Fairview School is complete, it will be yet another major plus for tourism in Cave Spring.