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Historic School Falls But Memories Rise
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Published: December 1, 2007
TAMPA - Meacham Alternative School, a monument to inner city education, began tumbling into rubble Friday, joining the remains of the neighborhood that had sent many of its young people there.
Meacham was the last building standing in the Central Park Village public housing project save for the pavilion where demolition workers eat their lunches. The red brick school at 1225 India St. is flanked by mountains of crumbling concrete and steel as it comes apart during the next few weeks.
On Friday, a heavy boom pushed in a second-story window, reached behind the wall and pulled it out. Bricks and mortar fell to the ground. Wood splintered and a steel bucket scraped against a concrete landing with a groan.
Nearly 80 people, including former teachers and administrators, students and about a dozen members of the family for which the school is named, came to reminisce and watch the beginning of the end. Many came away with bricks.
The day was bittersweet for descendents of Christina Meacham, Tampa's first black principal, who died in 1927. They were saddened that the brick building, first opened in 1926 as India Street School and renamed a year later for Meacham, was about to fall. They were pleased that a new middle school two blocks away will bear the name.
"It's very emotional for me," said Arndreeta Harris, great-granddaughter of Christina Meacham. The alternative school once was full of "children's voices and the sound of feet running up and down the halls. Now the halls and classrooms are silent; but only for a moment. Meacham will rise again."
Doris Scott was the school's principal between 1984 and 1999.
"I've been reminiscing so much," she said an hour or so before the heavy equipment made its first rip into the school. "When I started, I had 531 children from 6 weeks old to 6 years old and a staff of 81 people."
She cited academic awards the school won, both state and national.
"We did so much for the kids of this community," she said. "This was a disadvantaged area. I am proud of the things we did."
Harris' son, William, said his family initially objected to the plan to tear down the school that bore the name of his great-great-grandmother, but after plans evolved to build a new school and keep the name, the family agreed to the demolition.
"Meacham School had to be torn down," he said. "It wasn't going to be used as a school any more." His ancestor would have approved of the plan to relocate, he said.
Christina Meacham taught black school children in Tampa's segregated schools for 40 years around the turn of the 20th century and helped found the Hillsborough County and Florida Negro Teachers Associations. Meacham Elementary School, as it was known until 2004, was integrated in 1971.
For most of its history, the Meacham school was a community beacon, starting out as a place where the children of freed slaves learned to read and write.
The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005 but does not have local landmark status. City preservation officials said a 1954 remodeling destroyed the character of the two-story brick school. The lack of a local designation doomed the structure to the wrecking ball.
The school's demolition is to make way for progress. All around it, the Central Park Village housing project lies in rubble, being cleared for a development overseen by Bank of America and the Tampa Housing Authority.
Housing officials have said the removal of the school is crucial to a plan to replace Central Park Village with a new development.
The building is scheduled to be replaced by a town square of stores and offices serving the 2,030 people who would eventually live in the new development.
The development partners paid the Hillsborough School District $1.3 million for the building and exchanged the site for two acres of land north of Scott Street as the location of a new Christina A. Meacham Middle School. Bricks from the façade of the old school will be used to create a walkway and memorial marker at the new one.
Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at kmorelli@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7760.
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