The Armstrong School: A History, Conditions Evaluation, and Stabilization Plan of a Pre-Rosenwald Schoolhouse in Macon County, Alabama

Prepared by Namrata Dadawalla, Caitlin Livesey, and Jose Carlos Hernández

Instructor: Andrew Fearon

Course: HSPV 738: Conservation Seminar - Wood

Abstract

This paper aims to be a conclusive study of understanding the vernacular wood construction of the Amstrong School in Macon County, Alabama. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part concentrates on understanding the history of the structure in relation to the Rosenwald Schools and the The Negro Rural School, designed by Robert R. Taylor. It explores the cultural and historic significance of Rosenwald Schools in their communities and considers the vernacular building form in its evolution, typology, and context, as well as the tradition of community-building.The second part consists of meticulous analysis of the existing structure and identifying the failure points of the structure and the reason behind their failure. The final part of the study caters to the establishment of short-term as well as long-term plans for the stabilization and rehabilitation of the structure.

Table of Contents

Section        Page

Section 1.        Executive Summary

        1.1        Objective        4

        1.2        Methodology        4

Section 2.        History and Background

        2.1        Early African-American Schools        6

        2.2        The Armstrong School        8

        2.3        The Negro Rural School        10

        2.3        Comparison between Armstrong School and the Negro Rural School        12

        2.4        The Rosenwald Schools        14

        2.5        Aspects of vernacular construction        16

        2.6        Statement of Significance        17

Section 3.        Conditions Overview

        3.1        Structural Overview        19

        3.2        Structural Analysis - 3D model        19

Section 4.        Stabilization, Restoration, and Rehabilitation

        4.1.0        Potential threats        21

        4.1.1        Moisture        

        4.1.2        Biotic Agents

        4.2        Existing damage and deterioration        25

        4.3        Short-term recommendations        26

        4.4        Long-term recommendations        26

        4.5        Instructions and specifications        27

Section 5.        

                Conclusion        30

                Glossary        31

                Bibliography        32

1. Executive Summary

1.1 Objective

This paper describes the pathologies and semiotics of the wood-frame structure of the Armstrong School in Macon County, Alabama. It provides a cultural and historical background that informs possible restoration approaches. Further, it identifies deterioration mechanisms and suggests short-term and long-term recommendations to stabilize and preserve the structure.

This paper also draws a comparison between the ideal Rosenwald school and the existing Armstrong School. A digital reconstruction of  the Armstrong School in its ideal state is completed using 3D software and existing documentation from the instructional handbook The Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community.

This paper is not a conclusive conservation study, but a working document for further enrichment by architecture students from Tuskegee University, graduate students in the Historic Preservation program at the University of Pennsylvania, and professionals involved in the preservation of the Armstrong School.

1.2 Methodology

The method adopted is divided into three components: the semiotics of the placed context, current situation, and suggested rehabilitation strategies.

Semiotics of the Placed Context

This section develops an in-depth understanding of the built heritage and places the Armstrong School in the geological and cultural context. Research informs the climatic conditions and the type of wood employed in Macon county. This paper assumes that the wood used at the Armstrong School is Southern Yellow pine, as recommended in The Negro Rural School bulletin. Research also helps identify climatic threats that could exacerbate deterioration by fungi and termites.

Research informs the semiotics of the building construction, building typology, placement of the doors and windows, orientation of the space and binding architectural elements with the cultural theories thriving in Macon County.

Current situation

Students of the Tungskesee School of Architecture provided site photographs and measured drawings, including plans and sections. These were used to build a digital model in Rhinoceros and structural drawings in AutoCAD. The drawings produced by the team provide information of frames, structure, and behaviour of the structural loads.

The on-site photographs are used to infer the location of varying degrees of wood damage. The analysis will be enriched with wood samples requested to the Architecture Department of Tuskegee University. Examination of wood samples is an important future step in this process.

Suggested Rehabilitation Strategies

Short-term and long-term strategies are provided. These are drawn from observations in the wood samples. A short-term plan addresses the immediate stabilization of the structure while a long-term plan considers more invasive and permanent methods to improve the stability, appearance, and future preservation of the structure.

2. History and Background

2.1 Early African-American Schools

During the Jim Crow era (1877-1954), African Americans were denied access to education. Local counties and school officials denied school funds for African-American communities. As a consequence, many African American children learned in churches, lodge halls, and other private buildings. To ameliorate this, communities funded and built their rural schools. 

The early rural schools in the South reflect local conceptions of ideal design. They were a blend between a house and a church. Early schools were log cabins, usually having one door and sometimes a window, puncheon floors, and seats. They were usually heated by a fireplace or wood stove.^[1] One-teacher schools were no larger than thirty by forty feet. These spatial limitations responded to acoustic needs: large spaces prevented a teacher’s voice from reaching students at the other end of the room.^[2] Early schools also maximized sunlight by providing three to four small, widely spaced double-hung sash windows located on one or both of the long sides of the schoolhouse. There was usually one entrance on the shorter side of the building. Some school houses had two entrances, one for girls and one for boys –a characteristic of local churches.

Booker T. Washington (1856 – 1915), the prominent black educator and race leader from Tuskegee, is quoted saying:

"There are altogether about fifty distinct Negro farming communities in the county. Each one of these has a church and a schoolhouse, little stores, or a cotton gin belonging to some of the larger Negro landowners or to the white planter on whose land the community is located."^[3]

In the early 1900s, Tuskegee Institute staff organized school-construction projects as an integral element of community-based educational campaigns in the area around Tuskegee, for which Booker T. Washington solicited a combination of philanthropic donations and local contributions.^[4] Northern philanthropists funded these vocational and industrial programs. These individuals include Anna Thomas Jeanes (1822 – 1907), a Quaker from Philadelphia; John Fox Slater (1815 – 1884)  from New England; George Foster Peabody (1852-1938) from New York; Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840 – 1909) an industrialist of the Standard Oil Company from New York; and Julius Rosenwald (1862 – 1932) from Chicago.

Beginning in 1904, Washington and Clinton J. Calloway (1869 – 1940) from the Tuskegee Institute funded and supervised the construction of black rural schools. Black school patrons from Kowaliga in Elmore County, Alabama, provided funding and labor.^[5] From 1905 to 1909, Rogers funded forty-six one-teacher schools in collaboration with Washington.^[6] Rogers died in 1909, so Washington sought a new benefactor. He found it in Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Rosenwald funded six experimental schools that were based on Calloway's model.

African American residents of south Macon County practiced the Kwanzaa principle of Kujichagulia. It means self-determination by building and developing rural schools.^[7] Between 1905 and 1911, 53 one-teacher schools were built in Macon County, the birthplace of the school building program.^[8] Each cost approximately $700 at the time. These first schools were funded by Calloway, Rogers, Jeanes, and black residents of the community.^[9] 

While running the Tuskegee Institute, Washington recruited some of the country’s brightest minds to teach at the school.  The botanist and agricultural scientist George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943) of the Department of Agricultural Research was one of them. He taught agriculture and farming to Tuskegee students. When he arrived in Macon County, he found poverty, illiteracy, tenant farming, and Jim Crow policies, all of which were hindering African American advancement.^[10] Similarly, when Booker T. Washington traveled around Macon County, he found entire families sleeping in single rooms and eating inadequate food. He believed that agriculture was the solution to the region’s problems, hence his recruitment of Carver. Washington established Farmers Conferences, and by the turn of the century, circumstances were improving.^[11] Macon County was becoming a rural farming community.

One of Carver’s assistants, Clinton Calloway, established “forty-six one-room schoolhouses for black children across Macon County.”^[12] One of these schools might have been the Armstrong School, built in the given time frame as a one-room schoolhouse.

2.2 The Armstrong School

The Armstrong School is located in the community of Fort Davis in rural Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama.^[13] It is one of the early schools that inspired the Rosenwald School model.^[14] Commissioned by Calloway and built circa 1905, it currently sits next to the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. The extant church structure for the congregation was built decades later, around 1950. An active cemetery serving the congregation adjoins the property (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Site plan of the Armstrong School in the larger plot of land. Drawing produced by students of ARCH 414 Construction Documents course under the direction of Prof. Kwesi Daniels at Tuskegee University. May 5, 2020. Digital.

It was a collaborative effort between the church and the Tuskegee Institute. The one-room schoolhouse provided education to the community’s African American youth.

The Armstrong School may be named after Samuel Chapman Armstrong (1839 – 1893), a school superintendent of Hampton Institute in Virginia. Armstrong was a Union General from the Civil War and a prominent figure to the education of African Americans in Alabama. He advocated for African American teachers to educate students of their own race. During the second half of the 19th century, Armstrong founded and ran the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. The institution provided not only education of the mind but also practical instruction based on manual labor. As a Hampton graduate and a student of Armstrong, Washington believed in this educational philosophy. When Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute, he used the Hampton educational program as a model.^[15]

2.3. The Negro Rural School

In 1915, the Tuskegee Institute published the technical handbook The Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community, a 130-page manual prepared by the Extension Department that provided instructions for estimating, building, and maintaining teacher schools of varying sizes. This bulletin was highly influential in the construction of schools for African Americans in the early 20th century. The Community School Plans handbooks were distributed by the Interstate School Building Service, reaching thousands of communities across the American South.^[16]

Two Tuskegee-based black architects, Robert R. Taylor and William A. Hazel (1854-1929),^[17] produced the designs for ten school types.^[18] Taylor, the first African American to graduate from the M.I.T. School of Architecture, outlined the program. Hazel, an office-trained designer and teacher at Tuskegee, drew perspectival sketches and floorplans.^[19]George Carver provided the landscaping recommendations.^[20] 

The school programs proposed in The Negro Rural School are an evolutionary development of the early rural school. In addition, Taylor and his colleagues also drew from a body of literature on school-building, including Modern American School Buildings (1906) and American School Building Standards (1915).^[21] These publications provided recommendations on school planning and construction, from the orientation and dimension of schools, site selection, landscaping, and building materials to the arrangement of classrooms and equipment. Palliser’s Common Sense School Architecture (1889) provided plans for one-teacher schools that closely resemble the plans proposed in The Negro Rural School.^[22] 

The Negro Rural School manual provides clear instructions from site selection to the orientation of the building to the color of the walls and the arrangement of the desks. The one-teacher model features a multi-windowed classroom, a secondary room for industrial work, a library, a kitchen, and two cloak-rooms. The design provides for the expansion to two or even three classrooms, each attended by a teacher. Prior to the adoption of electric lighting, daylight was an important consideration in school design, so The Negro Rural School recommends orienting the schools to get the best natural lighting conditions, a principle evident in early schools.

In addition, The Negro Rural School provides recommendations on how to meet students’ everyday and developmental needs, ideas for fundraising, and blackboards, agricultural practices, and heating and sanitation solutions. The guide also recommends accommodations for students of different sizes and advances a practically-orientated education. Plans call for a workroom for practical training, as well as gardens and suggested seeds to plant. These design and construction principles were present in the Armstrong School.

Fig. 2: Site plan for a Two-Acre School Plot. Source: The Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community (Tuskegee: Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, 1915): 9.

2.4 Comparison between Armstrong School and The Negro Rural School

According to the guide, the most common schoolhouse for African American students in the region was likely to be the one-room schoolhouse, much like the Armstrong School. Among the many specifications for such a building were the recommendations for a school garden, outhouse plans, timber framing of Merchantable Yellow Pine, single desks fastened to the floor, and the inclusion of a workroom.^[23] Though the Armstrong School did not include a workroom, it was populated by wooden desks, and it had a garden. As is typical of Robert R. Taylor’s designs, the School also had many windows and faced south in order to allow for maximum sunlight (See Fig.3).^[24]

Fig. 3. Floor plan and section comparison between The Negro Rural School and the Armstrong School.

2.5 The Rosenwald Schools

In 1911, Booker T. Washington secured a new patron, Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck & Co, after visiting Chicago for a fundraising event for the Tuskegee Institute. The Rosenwald model was based on construction methods provided by the rural schools. The program was funded with matching funds: the community contributed with donations and labor from residents, as well as the state and county school boards. Investment was prioritized on building school facilities over teacher’s salaries, training, or instructional materials.

The Tuskegee industrial curriculum consisted of basic literacy and numeracy skills, with agricultural and trades programs for boys (carpentry, printing, wheelwrighting) and home economics for girls.^[25] Like the early rural schoolhouses, Rosenwald schools were part of larger ensembles that served as residential and commercial enclaves to African-American communities. Rosenwald schools often cohabited alongside churches, fraternal lodges, and funeral homes.

When the Rosenwald program ended in 1932, one of every five African American schools in the South was a Rosenwald school (Fig. 4).^[26] Between 1912 and 1932, Washington and Rosenwald built 5,357 schools in 15 states in the South.^[27]

 Fig. 4. Rosenwald Fund, School House Construction Map, 1932 (Fisk University)

2.6 Aspects of vernacular construction

Vernacular architecture is “characteristic of a period, place, or group,"^[28] or, as Thomas Carter and Elizabeth C. Cromley define it, a multifaceted subject. It is the architecture of the everyday, pervasive, linked to the community, and found within a certain geographic setting and time frame.^[29] 

The Armstrong School is in some ways an example of the vernacular construction contingent to Macon County, Alabama in the early 20th century. In addition, the school programs proposed in The Negro Rural School are deeply connected to the students and teachers who occupy the schoolhouses, the families of those students, and the climate and the rural geography of the region, making them seem almost vernacular. These schools also fit a certain time frame, during an initiative to educate African Americans in Alabama.^[30] 

Rural schools were symbols of community pride. They were built by members of the community that valued literacy to combat oppression and resist Jim Crow policies in the South. The Armstrong School was also anchored to its community, its geographic location, and its use. When it was in operation, it likely followed the typical schoolhouse model, with single desks spaced out throughout the room, and the teacher’s desk at one end.^[31] It was built from locally available materials, as the wooden structure was likely sourced from Yellow Pine. The school was built to suit the local climatic and geographic demands and was oriented to maximize sunlight, as electricity was not always available in rural Macon County.

The land included a school garden to complement the educational program and provide space for a farming community. Much like the Tuskegee Institute, the Armstrong School provided practical learning where students could use the garden as a laboratory for learning. Planting in the garden was also considered a substitute activity for students who could not get textbooks.^[32] Indeed, the garden, the school, and the surrounding land constituted a communal center to the Armstrong Community.

In addition, The Negro Rural School provides specific plans to reproduce. Indeed, as Carter and Cromley argue, vernacular architecture is also meant to be pervasive, just as the rural schoolhouse in the South is. Rural schoolhouses in the South were pervasive in part because they were economical and practical. The structures were probably not meant to be adapted to their specific circumstances, but to follow the manual strictly. Yet, the rural schoolhouses as a whole are not entirely vernacular, given that their construction follows instructional handbooks.

2.7 Statement of Significance

Significance at Armstrong School is rooted in its communal values.  It is an example of a model that, along with churches, was central to African American communities.  The School is a testament to the self-determination of African Americans in Alabama in the first decade of the 20th century. As an educational facility, it contributed to the literacy that emancipated descendants of formerly enslaved individuals to freedom and citizenship.

The primary aim of any conservation plan should be to maintain the authenticity of the historic fabric. The school is valued as the last remaining original church school for African Americans still standing in south Macon County. ^[33]

Character-defining features include:

• Traditions and techniques of vernacular construction
• Paint treatment of the carpentry (white paint was intentionally used for educational purposes)
• Non-structural elements that include the windows for daylight

The value of these character-defining elements informs the intervention plans suggested at the end of this report.

At the time of writing this report, the Black Heritage Council (BHC), an arm of the Alabama Historical Commission that advocates for the preservation and restoration of African American historic places in Alabama, is currently involved in designating the Armstrong School as a state and national historic site. State historic sites are submitted to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

3. Conditions Overview

3.1 Structure Overview

The Armstrong school is a one-story wood-frame building with a low pitched Gable roof. It is a stud-wall wood-frame of 2×4 construction. The structural elements are 6×6 sills, 2×4 studs, 2×4 top plates, and roof joists (Figs. 5 and 6). The 6×6 corner posts are load-bearing. The rafter support system at the roof consists of a king truss without the central post. This is not a post-and-truss system. Connections are nailed.

The foundation type is crawl-spaced. The wood structure sits on brick masonry piers that lifts the structure away from the ground to protect it from ground moisture and insect infestation. In addition, the crawl-based foundation provides a zone to accommodate ductwork, plumbing, and other utilities.

Clapboard siding is placed over the wood frame, with no sheathing in between. The exterior is painted in white.

3.2 Structural Analysis

The daylight windows on one of the sides reduce the structure’s resistance to lateral loads, primarily wind. The piers are not plunged. Sills are turning to dust. We make a judgement call that the sills are compromised. The roof is covered with tin sheet metal. Water infiltration may be present.

Fig 6-b. Perspectival view of a 3D reconstruction of the Armstrong School.

4. Stabilization, Restoration, and Rehabilitation

4.1 Potential Threats

Moisture

Macon County is located in the warm-humid climate zone of the United States. The annual average temperature in Macon County is 63 degrees Fahrenheit, and the annual average precipitation is 52.92 inches, both of which are greater than the national average. This indicates the potential for damage as a result of insolation, heat, and moisture.^[34]

Soil

The soil on the site of the Armstrong School is mostly Searcy fine sandy loam and Oktibbeha clay loam. Searcy fine sandy loam is composed of a top layer of fine sandy loam, with sandy clay beginning approximately 14 inches below the surface. Oktibbeha clay loam is composed of a top layer of clay loam, with layers of clay and silty clay beneath. This soil composition poses a threat to the structure on top.While sand is an acceptable soil for building, clay has generally poor foundation value due to the tendency of clay particles to shrink and swell with exposure to moisture. Given the high potential for capillary rise in clay, the structure could also be affected by rising damp and vulnerable to the impacts of moisture in the base of the structure.^[35]

Fig 7. Site view. Web Soil Survey, Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture.

Fungal Decay

Fungal decay is a biotic threat present in the Armstrong School. The region of Macon County has a climate index for decay hazard of about 80, putting it in the highest category in the United States and at the greatest risk for decay.^[36] Additionally, Macon County’s climate contributes to its susceptibility to fungal decay. Decay occurs most rapidly at temperatures between 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It moves slowly at temperatures lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and stops at 35 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.^[37] In Macon County, the mean temperature reaches below 50 degrees Fahrenheit only three months of the year, and it never reaches above 95 degrees Fahrenheit.^[38] These climatic conditions promote fungal decay nine months of the year. The climate never reaches a mean temperature as low as 35 degrees Fahrenheit so that decay would stop altogether. In addition, Southern Yellow Pine, a material suggested by Robert R. Taylor,^[39] is a wood deemed “slightly or nonresistant” to heartwood decay, furthering the susceptibility of the Armstrong School to fungal decay.^[40] The appearance of the deteriorated beams in the Armstrong School indicate the presence of brown rot, specifically.

Termites

The climate of Macon County and the nature of the construction of the schoolhouse both make the structure vulnerable to termite damage. Subterranean termites are more common in the South than northern parts of the country, given the higher temperatures. Also, the school was built upon brick piers over the ground, without a basement or a concrete slab foundation. Structures that are built in such close proximity to the earth are often of the greatest susceptibility to termite infestation.^[41]

The schoolhouse shows signs of termite infestation, especially near the ground. Small pin holes indicate the presence of termites, and some beams, especially the unpainted sills, show their feeding galleries along the grain of the beams.^[42]

The termite damage found in the Armstrong School could be caused by either Formosan termites or subterranean termites. Formosan termites were first found in Alabama in 1987.^[43] They are most often found in coastal areas in the state.^[44] Though they have never been discovered in Macon County, they have also been found in Lee and Montgomery counties, which border Macon county.^[45] This termite species attacks wood near soil, and they often build their nests underground.^[46] Subterranean termites do this as well; however, Formosan termites also have the ability to build nests on upper floors of a structure, distinguishing them from other species.^[47]

Lateral Stress due to Wind

In Macon County, the year-long average wind speed is 4.4 miles per hour. March is the windiest, with an average hourly wind speed of 5.4 miles per hour.^[48] The large window opening on one wall reduces the structure’s ability to withstand lateral forces.

Biological Deterioration

The school is susceptible to root jacking by vegetation. The growth of these roots causes pressure on the brick piers. Their exact forces depend on the species, and the species of vegetation surrounding the Armstrong School is undetermined. It has been found, for instance, that corn exerts axial root pressures as high as 366 psi at the tip while radial root pressures can rise to 100 psi.^[49]

Fig 8. The growth of the vegetation caused deterioration to the brick piers at Amstrong school.

4.2 Existing Damage and Deterioration

Water has infiltrated the sills and the bottom of the studs. The brick piers may be affected by moisture, as well. Water has been able to enter the structure through the damaged roof, window openings, and rising damp from the soil.

The rafters may be compromised. We suspect a failure could be caused by a combination of water infiltration and insect contact. Termite tunnels may be present in several locations. The condition of the mortar at the masonry piers must be reviewed by a qualified structural engineer for failure joints.

The tin roof shows corrosion, damage, and warping, and it no longer adequately covers the structure. This could have been caused by the corrosion of nails holding the roof in place, and by exposure to sun and rain over a long period of time. The damage allows moisture, particularly rain, to easily enter the structure, and to more easily infiltrate the rafters. It also allows the opportunity for vermin infestation.

The brick masonry piers are unstable, as some are off-kilter or have toppled over. This is in part due to the questionable stability of the soil beneath them. There is vegetation growing on the piers, which has the potential to infiltrate the mortar. This could result in mortar loss or damage and instability of the masonry piers. One can also see rotted wood and insect damaged sills sitting directly on top of the piers, suggesting that the piers may be affected by moisture.

The clapboard siding also shows signs of deterioration. The white paint has worn away in many places. The nails that attach the siding to the frame may also be compromised. Some clapboards are missing, leaving the unpainted frame exposed to the exterior.

4.3 Short-term Recommendations

Emergency Stabilization^[50]

A temporary tarp could be placed on the roof to minimize water infiltration from rain and contact with insects. We recommend the turf-wrap. Plywood should also be applied to the window openings, which are currently covered by a tarp. This will help to prevent further rain and vermin infiltration and add lateral stability to the opening.

A licensed structural engineer should be consulted in order to determine a temporary shoring plan on the floor plate. The structure should be jacked up with hydraulic jacks or using screw jacks. Knee bracing may be added to the exterior of the structure and the door frames. The structural engineer  may recommend a combination of shoring and bracing so the structure rests on solid ground.

Cribbing should be added below the girder in order to release compressive force on the brick piers and add stability. An evaluation of the piers would determine whether they should be reinforced or replaced as load-bearing elements.

4.4 Long-term Recommendations

Once the shoring is in place, the floor plate should be rebuilt or extensively reinforced. Many of the floor joists should be replaced. Further inspection by a qualified structural engineer is necessary in order to determine which joists require replacement, as the structure is currently unsafe to enter. The most deteriorated posts and joists in the walls need to be replaced, as they are vulnerable to shear forces. An on-site and interior inspection by the qualified individual is necessary to determine which members require replacement. Sills should be replaced, as they have been heavily attacked by termites. If possible, moisture barriers should be installed to prevent future water damage.^[51] This protection from ground water would assist in the prevention of rising damp, insect activity, and fungal decay.

The structural engineer should determine if lateral reinforcement is needed, such as steel-braced frames, or replacement of timber frames. The size and specifications of posts is dependent upon where compressive and tensile stresses are in action. Simpson CS16 straps may be needed to transfer the tensile forces. The window opening in the side walls causes structural weakness to lateral loads, such as wind. Reinforcement at these openings may be necessary to add stiffness. This may include replacement of the wood members of the window frame, as well as replacement glass panes to fill the opening.

Nails that are not galvanized may need to be removed to prevent further corrosion. Galvanized Simpson ties could replace the historic nails to reinforce the connections. This includes nails that attach the clapboards to the frame, as well as nails that attach the tin roof to the rafters and truss. The tin sheets of the roof should be repaired where possible or replaced with a similar material.

The brick masonry piers must be reset, and some may require repointing with mortar or replacement of bricks. The mortar should be a breathable material, such as lime-based mortar, to prevent moisture entrapment. The structure may require a new concrete footing to ensure the future stability of the piers, to prevent further insect infestation, and to protect the schoolhouse from the effects of soil moisture. Efforts should also be made to improve the state of the foundation soil. Clay soil could be replaced with a preferable foundation soil such as gravel. Alternatively, a less costly option is to compact the soil. A water drainage system should also be installed in order to prevent water from entering the soil beneath the structure.^[52]

4.5 Instructions and Specifications

Do not climb or enter the structure without an evaluation from a licensed structural engineer. Provisions should be made to make sure no new live loads are applied to the structure (activities such as climbing up the roof, or walking inside without approval from the engineer, etc.).

Recommended Stabilization Actions^[53]

Conclusion

As an early-20th century schoolhouse for African American children that was likely a precursor to the Rosenwald Schools, the Armstrong School holds immense historical and community value. Its preservation is important to the memory of early African American education and of prominent education advocates in Alabama and throughout the country. As a cornerstone of its community at the time of its construction, the Armstrong School is a representation of the close ties between residents and their churches and schools, of the innovative design of Robert R. Taylor, and of the wide influence of Tuskegee University in Macon County. The structure is vulnerable in its current state and requires immediate stabilization to prevent further deterioration or collapse. This report offers preliminary suggestions as to what actions are necessary in order to secure the structure, as well as follow-up actions to maintain that stability. These long-term plans should restore the Armstrong School to a structure that is secure against the climate and environment of Macon County, ensure that the structure is safe to enter, improve its appearance, and preserve its history for the appreciation of future generations.

Glossary

Girder        A load-bearing horizontal framing member (beam). In this case it supports the load from the floor above it.

Post        A vertical support member that often helps to carry the girder.

Sill plate        Fastened to the foundation by anchor bolts, sills provide a wood surface to nail to. Generally a pressure-treated 2 ✕ 6.

Sill              A sill is a structural member consisting of a continuous horizontal timber forming the lowest

                   member of a framework or supporting structure. doorsill, doorstep, threshold - the sill of a

                   door;a  horizontal piece of wood or stone that forms the bottom of a doorway and offers

                   support when passing through a doorway.

Joist           A joist is a horizontal structural member used in framing to span an open space, often

                  between beams that subsequently transfer loads to vertical members.

Post           A post is a main vertical or leaning support in a structure similar to a column or pillar but the

                   term post generally refers to timber.

Rafters      A rafter is one of a series of sloped structural members such as wooden beams that extend

                  from the ridge or hip to the wall plate, downslope perimeter or eave, and that are designed to

                  support the roof shingles, roof deck and its associated loads.

Soffit        The soffit is basically, any finishing material, such as wood or fiber cement, that is installed to

                  cover the underside of your roof overhang.

Truss        A timber roof truss is a structural framework of timbers designed to bridge the space above a

                 room and to provide support for a roof. Trusses usually occur at regular intervals, linked by

                 longitudinal timbers such as purlins. The space between each truss is known as a bay.

Girder     A girder is a main beam that extends across a span in order to support joists or rafters that

                 otherwise would be unable to reach across the open expanse.

Lattice      Latticework is traditionally made from wood lath strips arranged in a diagonal criss cross

                 pattern, held together with galvanized staples.

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