Historic Petersburg High School
(Appomattox Regional Governor`s School for the Arts and Technology)
Virginia
Historical Significance
The Neo-Classical Revival-Style Petersburg High School is the focal point of the Folly Castle National Register Historic District and one of the most prominent historic landmarks in the City of Petersburg. Erected on the site of an earlier seminary, the school was designed in 1916 by Findlay Forbes Ferguson. Completed in 1918, the school was intended to provide an anchor for community life and to symbolize the City`s progressive attitude toward education. Monumental in scale and considered one of Virginia`s most handsome public school buildings, the three-story, five-bay, masonry structure on a raised basement is dominated by a semi-circular auditorium flanked by a pair of skylit porticos in antis to shelter the building`s two prominent front entries. The gymnasium with its large arched steel windows was constructed in 1939.
The school steadily increased in population through the 1960s. With the desegregation of public schools in Virginia, it became Petersburg`s only public high school. To help alleviate overcrowded conditions created by city annexation of parts of neighboring counties and the effect of desegregation, the building was replaced by the present Petersburg High School in 1973. For nearly two decades the building sat underutilized or vacant awaiting an uncertain future. Alarmed by its deteriorating state, the Appomattox Educational Foundation took form in 1996 for the purpose of adapting the vacant landmark to serve as the first full-time Governor`s School in Southside Virginia. The school was successfully rehabilitated in three phases between 1996 and 2000.
Challenges Overcome
A major challenge of this project was to design a facility to meet current educational and building infrastructure needs of a world class educational facility while maintaining the integrity of this important historic landmark. The project succeeded in meeting the various and sometimes conflicting requirements of the users, the National Park Service, budget limitations, building codes, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a modern mechanical system. An equally daunting challenge was how to finance the project. Timing and fund raising needs dictated that funding the construction loan begin before all repayment sources had been identified. The key to overcoming these challenges was found in the strong and creative leadership of the partners and the innovative use of federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits through syndication. The project is notable for the exceptional quality and care exercised during the renovation of the building.
Unique Strategies and Activities Carried Out
Private funding for the project has been achieved largely through community grants and private donations from corporations, area businesses, and civic organizations and private individuals totally $7.5 million. The creation of a non-profit foundation, a limited liability for-profit company, a for-profit limited partnership was necessary for the project to qualify for historic rehabilitation tax credits of $5.2 million. This unique strategy of combining a traditional fund raising campaign with a public-private partnership arrangement to receive historic rehabilitation tax credits was the first of its kind for a public school in the United States and now serves as a financing model for other communities to follow in public school rehabilitations.
The project was planned deliberately to galvanize the community and the surrounding region, beginning with the City`s donation of the building to the Foundation. The Foundation itself has drawn its membership from a broad spectrum of people from the region all dedicated to the single purpose of preserving and reusing the historic landmark school as a school without compromising the building`s historic and architectural integrity.
Community Impact and Model
The project continues to have a major impact on the vitality of downtown Petersburg and is greatly enhancing Petersburg`s reputation among outside investors. The school`s rehabilitation is stimulating revitalization of its surrounding urban neighborhood and indicating a return of investment to the downtown area. The City of Petersburg has initiated a major revitalization project to enhance the value of properties adjacent to the school site and to attract business and industry to the downtown. Formerly derelict properties are being rehabilitated for owner occupancy: thirty properties adjacent to the School have been or are under consideration for purchase or development by the Historic Petersburg Foundation, the City of Petersburg, and the Petersburg Community Development Corporation. Two former schools, both built in the early twentieth century in nearby neighborhoods, have been adaptively reused as senior citizens housing.
The project`s impact on the wider community is still more far reaching. The project demonstrates that creative use of federal and state rehabilitation tax credits can allow school districts to leverage private and public investment in successful rehabilitations of historic public school buildings for continued public educational use.
For more information contact:
Bob Carter
804/ 863-1626
