Heritage foundation provides grant for Fairview building

♦ The historic Black school in Cave Spring is recognized as a cultural resource.

The Rome Area Heritage Foundation has awarded a $1,500 grant to help jumpstart the next phase of improvements at the Fairview School-e.s. Brown campus.

The historic Black school site is at 278 Padlock Mountain Road in Cave Spring.

Joyce Perdue-smith, head of the nonprofit Fairview-e.s. Brown Heritage Corp., said the money will be used to leverage other grant funding. They’re working to come up with $50,000 for a plan to develop the rest of the 3.5 acre campus around the old first grade building, which has been completely restored.

“It will help us sustain Fairview with a master plan that charts a comprehensive and interpretative road map for the future,” Perduesmith said. “RAHF has been a supporter since our very beginning. We both have a shared interest in documenting and preserving the history of our community.”

They’ve not only lent monetary support but many of the foundation’s leaders were on hand to help clear the kudzu that covered the old building, she said, and they’ve been strong partners throughout the effort to restore the historic segregated school.

The campus was placed on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation Places in Peril list in 2011.

Kevin Mcauliff, a senior planner with the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission, is a member of the foundation’s board. He said the Fairviewe.s. Brown group is seeking a $25,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission for the project.

“They have their paperwork lined up pretty well,” Mcauliff said. “I did the grants that got them from a ruin to a functional building, so I don’t want to see things stop now.”

The master plan would seek to identify the best ways to implement plans for a garden, a woodworking shop and other projects that would showcase the way life skills were taught to young Black children more than half a century ago.

Perdue-smith anticipates that it will take about $50,000 to develop a plan to implement everything needed at the campus, which was originally built in the mid 1920s. The first grade building, the only thing left standing, was added in the mid 1940s.

David Yoakley Mitchell — a member of the RAHF board as well as director of operations at the Atlanta Preservation Center — said the grant from RAHF will support the stability of a community cultural resource.

“This is more than a school, it is part of our community identity,” Mitchell said.