Fairview gets a $23,000 grant
The money is earmarked to start stabilization work on the old school building.
Barely a week after the Fairview-E.S. Brown School in Cave Spring was added the National Register of Historic Places, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division has awarded a $23,000 grant for work at the school site.
The initial campus was constructed in the mid 1920s with financial assistance from the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization founded by Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, for the education of African-American children. The building that still stands was constructed circa 1945.
The Fairview-E.S. Brown Heritage Corporation in Cave Spring partnered with the city of Rome to submit the grant application. Joyce Perdue-Smith, chairwoman of the corporation, said her group partnered with the city of Rome because it is a Certified Local Government and eligible to apply for the grant.
To be eligible to become a federal Certified Local Government, a city or county must have passed a preservation ordinance and have established an historic preservation commission.
Smith said the $23,000 grant was the second largest in the current round of funding. “We’re so happy to be among the top groups to get money this time,” Perdue-Smith said. “I think that says a lot about the importance of our project.”
Kevin McAuliff, a planner at the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission who wrote the grant application, said the DNR/HP division would meet with the Fairview E.S. Brown Corporation to detail exactly how the state wants the funds to be used.
“They’re going to present
Fairview with a contract and that contract is going to flesh-in what specifically HPD wants done with its money,” McAuliff said. “I can guarantee you that basically it’s going to be structural stabilization work. It needs foundation work, it needs floor work, it needs wall work and it needs roof work. In other words it needs about everything.”
The Fairview-E.S. Brown Heritage Corp., working with the Floyd County Board of Education, wants to create a “living campus” for teaching traditional trades and crafts such as carpentry and woodworking. The approximately three and a half acres
around the building would offer space for cultivated plots to teach children to garden.
The grant is a 60/40 grant, meaning the local community has to provide a 40 percent match, approximately $15,000, for the federal funds. Perdue Smith said some of the 40 percent local match will include labor from inmates at the Floyd
Correctional Institution, architectural expenses being contributed Joseph Smith of Madison, and Ira Levy for his consulting services.
Loring Kirk, president of the Cave Spring Historical Society, said he was excited to hear about the grant. “It represents the Rosenwalds effort to provide school opportunities for black, or African-American children,” Kirk said. “The school deserves to be restored and we wish them all the success.”
Perdue-Smith said she was not sure what kind of timetable the state envisions for the project, but she hopes roofing work can get underway as quickly as possible.