Athens Daily Review"
The historic Malakoff Elementary campus, more commonly known as the “Rock Building” or the “Old Rock School,” has been a contested structure since the spring. Though district officials had intended for the building to be demolished, the plan was sidetracked on May 21 by a letter from the Texas Historical Commission.
Made of brown fieldstone and supported by concrete beams, the Rock Building was constructed in 1940 as part of the federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), known earlier as the Works Progress Administration. WPA was enacted in 1935 under President Franklin Roosevelt to provide jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression.
Nationwide, WPA raised 1,634 schools. Only about 500 are still standing today.
“We are the proud owners of one of the good ones,” Malakoff Mayor Pat Isaacson said. “The only other viable WPA-made school building in the area is owned by Brownsboro ISD.”
After touring the building in January, former Malakoff superintendent Larry Hulsey announced the district’s plan to tear it down. The Rock Building, he said, was in need of extensive renovation to be useful to the district — the roof leaked, there were holes in the floor, and the building wasted electricity, among other problems.
The demolition stopped with the notice from the Historical Commission, which said the commission would require 60 days to determine if the building should be preserved. More than three months later, the district is still unsure how to proceed.
Malakoff ISD Superintendent John Spies said the commission found that the building probably has some legal protections. Ultimately, however, the choice to preserve or demolish the building rests with the school board.
“It is not (a building) that is automatically protected,” Spies said.
In estimates made during Hulsey’s tenure, renovating the Rock Building for use as a modern-day schoolhouse carried a price tag of more than $2 million. According to Isaacson, that plan involved completely gutting and rebuilding the school’s interior.
No cost estimates are available for demolition or converting the building into a museum, Spies said.
“I’m not ready to throw out figures on that yet,” he said. “We’re trying to get all sides to agree on what figures are accurate.”
Spies and Isaacson — who is also the secretary-treasurer for the Malakoff Historical Society — are set to visit with a Texas Historical Commission architect this weekend for a full update. Marcel Quimby, of the Dallas firm Quimby McCoy, inspected the building this year in the company of Spies and Isaacson. She wrote a five-page report on her findings.
“We were in the building roughly four hours,” Isaacson said. “She went through the building with a fine-toothed comb.”
Quimby’s report described the Rock Building as being “in very good condition” and called it “a real ‘treasure’ for the community.” Quimby gave the building good marks on structural integrity — she found no evidence of mold, termites or underlying dampness in the foundation, and the interior walls were in “generally good condition.” The walls between the classrooms, which are plaster-covered brick, would also afford a surprising amount of fire protection.
“Very few schools of this era (and today) are built with this level of fire protection for the structure and its occupants,” she wrote.
The report ends with the recommendation that the building be restored for history’s sake. Its possible future uses include local history museum, public library and community center.
Isaacson is a big-time supporter of those ideas. She describes the building as an unintentional hoard of antiques — in order to save money while renovating, previous school boards chose to cover up older features rather than remove them.
“Which is wonderful,” she said. “It means all the old antiquity is there.” Among the preserved relics in the building are the original wooden floor — made of long-leaf pine, and later carpeted over — and wooden lockers hidden behind newer metal ones in classrooms. Old-fashioned blackboards made of painted plaster were also found behind wall-mounted green chalkboards.
“The building still has a tremendous amount of historical value left,” Isaacson said.
If the building were preserved for use by the Malakoff Historical Society, Isaacson said, only part of it would likely be used for a history museum. The remaining space could be used for both a recreation center and as a new home for the Red Waller Community Library.
At present, the library encompasses 7,000 square-feet and can’t get any bigger.
“Right now, they’re sitting on top of themselves. They have no room to expand,” Isaacson said. “(The Rock Building) is over 14,000 square-feet. There’s ample room to make lots of things out of it.”
Because most of the interior would be preserved, Isaacson said, it would probably cost much less to make the Rock Building into a museum instead of a school. Most of the changes would be cosmetic, such as pulling up carpeting, uncovering antique ceilings and widening doorways. If possible, at least two classrooms would be preserved exactly as they were built, she said.
“It would probably need to be rewired, just for longevity’s sake,” she said, adding that the building’s exterior is “mostly perfect.”
Isaacson remains optimistic about getting board approval to use the Rock Building. Having Quimby on the Historical Society’s side probably helps, she said.
“We have been before the school board three times now,” she said. “I will say that the presentation by the architect as a historical expert really impressed them.”