A new community center? Former school seen as more than museum

By Rachana Dixit

Published: November 30, 2008

Only in elementary school when the rumblings of integration were pervading Charlottesville, Martin Burks did not realize something was not right about the Jefferson School until schools started to close.

“I didn’t know any different,” said Burks, who attended the segregated, all-black school as an elementary student from 1959 to 1965. Because his mother was a teacher while he was a student, Burks said that at the time he did not think his early education would have turned out any other way. And because he was separated from his white counterparts for several years, Burks said, “You really didn’t know that much was going on.”

For Charlottesville’s black community, the Jefferson School often induces strong memories of their education at a time when racial division prevailed in the city. And now those involved in its redevelopment, whose costs have been estimated to be around $19 million, are working to turn the building into a center that brings together people of diverse groups and ages while preserving the school’s captivating history.

“I want it to be for the whole community,” said Burks, president of the Jefferson School Partners, the group overseeing the school’s redevelopment. “Our community is not just black and white now.”

The Jefferson School was built in 1926, adjacent to the old Jefferson Graded Elemen-tary School that was constructed in 1894. The newer building functioned as an all-black high school until 1951, when it was converted into an elementary.

Thirteen years later it was closed, and then was primarily used as classroom and office space, as well as housing preschool and Piedmont Virginia Community College programs.

The school closed its doors for good in 2002, and there have been inklings to restore the 76,000-square-foot, two-story building for more than six years.

Burks said the private partnership, which became the school property’s owner after Charlottesville transferred the rights, is looking to get construction rolling by the end of 2009, when the inside of the building will be overhauled while leaving the exterior untouched.

“The people that care deeply about the Jefferson School history and all it represents want it to be a use for the building that includes a public and civic component,” said Daniel Bluestone, a professor of architectural history at the University of Virginia.

The building is set to have two main tenants — the 20,979-square-foot Carver Recreation Center run by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and a new, 9,368-square-foot African-American Heritage Center.

“That’s very, very important,” Burks said, referring to the new center that will focus on high school alumni. “Without that it wouldn’t have been a project.”

About 26,000 square feet will be leased by multiple tenants. So far, Burks said the Jefferson Area Board for Aging — which previously had a senior center at the school — has been tapped as a definite one, although no lease has been inked.

Having the right tenants for the buildings has been a challenge for the partnership; several years ago, a task force suggested that the renovated site include condos and affordable apartments — a proposal shot down by the community and eventually abandoned.

“We really are looking for something that blends with the overall character of Jefferson School,” City Councilor Julian Taliaferro said.

Deborah Bell Burks, who co-chairs the advisory committee for the African-American Heritage Center, said the area slated for the center is not going to be used just as a space with decades-old artifacts.

“We’re not aiming for a museum,” she said. “It’s also going to be a learning center.”

Instead, Burks, Martin’s wife, said that that section of the school will lure people to the building with performances, lectures, classes and exhibits about the school’s history, alumni and the black community.

Bluestone said having a resource like the African-American Heritage Center can provide numerous benefits to the city.

Bluestone cited Farmville’s formerly all-black R.R. Moton High School as a place where public engagement is being fostered through the school’s history.

Moton helped to influence the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case, after some of its students challenged segregation by leading a walkout and refusing to attend classes in their overcrowded and inferior facility.

A museum has been established in the school to interpret the 1951 walkout done by Moton students and segregation in the town.

“They understand that that’s actually an engine for economic development in Farmville,” Bluestone said. “All of those issues could be equally developed in Charlottesville, in and around this cultural center.”

Attracting more tourists to the city could spur economic development, much to the content of local leaders. But in increasingly tight times for financing, officials know that they need to find funding sources to keep the heritage center running.

“It’s gotta pay for itself, that’s the big issue,” Taliaferro said.

Bluestone said it would be perfectly reasonable for the city to secure tenants that would support the civic uses of the building and provide a steady revenue stream into city coffers.

“This is a centrally located piece of land and there’s been increasing interest in the last 10 or 15 years in people being located close to the center of Charlottesville,” Bluestone said.

But for many, the school represents more than just a geographic center — Martin Burks said the school was the social center of Charlottesville’s black community for many years, and is one of the last vestiges that exist to demonstrate that history.

“Jefferson School has remained,” he said.