A concerted community effort is needed to return the historic Woodville School at Ordinary to its original place as a public facility, Dr. Wesley C. Wilson told the Gloucester Genealogical Society of Virginia Monday.
Wilson, who is active in a foundation working to restore the Woodville School and the Thomas Calhoun Walker house in Gloucester Court House, said that the Gloucester Economic Development Authority purchased the old school several years ago.
Now, Wilson estimated it will cost approximately $500,000 to remodel the interior of the building, provide a vehicular deceleration lane required by the Virginia Department of Transportation for proper access to the site, and do landscaping. Also, a small building to the rear that once was used to teach home economics and house a visiting teacher might be relocated and attached to the main building to provide additional restroom space.
During the society’s annual meeting at the Gloucester Library in Main Street Center, Wilson said preliminary plans call for opening up part of the old school building into a large room to be used as a community center, where meetings and receptions could be held. A portion of the facility would be retained as small classrooms, with some original furniture from the school to be on view. “We do not intend for this to be a museum,” he said.
If funds can be raised and community partners work together, Wilson said, the project might be completed within five years.
The Woodville School was a Rosenwald school, one of about 5,300 schools, teachers’ homes and labs built throughout the South to offer public education to young black residents in the early 1900s at a time when such opportunities were limited. A key to the schools and related projects, Wilson said, was that much of the expense to build a school was borne by the black community, a portion by the public, and what couldn’t be raised was paid for by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the chairman and chief executive officer of Sears Roebuck.
The Rosenwald school “was green before green was popular,” Wilson said, explaining that the schools were sited to maximum use of natural daylight. Most were placed with many windows in a north-south direction, he said, with some sited on an east-west pattern with different window placement.
The Woodville School was one of seven schools built here under the Rosenwald school program, and only one that remains. The Woodville School, along with similar schools at James Store and Purton Bay, opened in 1923, with several other schools also opening here in the 1920s.
T.C. Walker was instrumental in bringing Rosenwald schools here, Wilson said. An earlier acquaintance with Booker T. Washington, a teacher and dean of men when Walker attended Hampton Institute almost penniless in his quest for an education after only limited education when he was younger, led to Walker connecting with Rosenwald and helping to spearhead local fund drives to erect schools.
Walker, a former teacher who later was a lawyer, helped William B. Weaver start a private training school for black students at Cappahosic in the late 1880s, Wilson said, but later shifted his efforts to supporting public education for black people here. T.C. Walker Education Center, named for him, served as a school, originally for black children, for many years.
Wilson said he is available to take individuals or groups to view the Woodville School. For more information about the fund drive, call him at 693-6543 or visit the T.C. Walker-Woodville/Rosenwald School Foundation website.
In other business, the society elected its officers Monday as follows: president Phil Morton, vice president Lee Brown, secretary Buzz Perkins, treasurer Bill Lawrence, and historian Martha Morton.
The society is seeking new members. For more information, call Nadine Tatum at 693-4274 or see the society website at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vaggsv.