Home Park School

When the Home Park School was constructed in 1911, the Atlanta Board of Education was undergoing major transitions. Changes came about through the alignment of the curriculum with more progressive, less traditional studies; through the need for new and improved physical facilities; through the administration of personnel who were becoming more self-directive and outspoken; through political realities of having to deal with Ward politics to sustain support for the schools; and through an assortment of crises which emanated from the city’s rapid growth in the early twentieth century. 

Home Park School was a new educational facility, but it replaced an older private school, Ethel Street School, which had its origins near the Home Park neighborhood in Chastaintown. Founded in 1900, Ethel Street was already in difficulty in 1905. According to the County School Superintendent, more than a hundred applicants for enrollment had been turned away from the school due to a reported lack of accommodation. A new building was an absolute necessity, and there was great pressure on Ethel Street School because of the manufacturing interests, mainly the Atlantic Steel Company, located nearby that provided a community anchor in the Home park area. In 1909, the superintendent noted that things had gotten so bad at Ethel Street School that it had reached “undesirable conditions”. In 1909, two classrooms were added to the original structure, but nothing more was done because of the imminent annexation of Ethel Street to the Atlanta public school system. The agreement between Atlanta and Fulton County required that the Atlanta system take over the Ethel Street School in mid-term, January 1910. The Atlanta Board voted to lease Ethel Street until the close of the term and began to make plans for its expansion. 

In April 1910, the sites for new schools were selected for all but two schools, of which Home Park was one. In July, the school boundaries committee made its report, and the Home Park school district was finally set. At this time the architects and contractors were also selected and in November 1910, after considerable reworking of designs and specifications, the contracts were let for construction. In all, twelve school buildings were targeted for construction, none to cost over forty-thousand-dollars. The Home Park design work went to local architect Edward Doughtery and the contractor was George A. Clayton. 

On March 3, 1911, local citizens, the mayor, the school board, dignitaries, the principal of Ethel Street School, teachers, and pupils gathered to lay the cornerstone for the Home Park School. George Napier placed the stone; Hugh Richardson, donor of the school lot and one of the developers of Home Park, spoke of the occasion; the mayor praised the North Atlanta Improvement Club which had advocated the school’s placement and wondered, once he saw all the children, if it would be big enough. 

With the beginning of the new school year in September 1911, Home Park School was functional. The School Board had appropriated forty-thousand-dollars for the school, none of which had to go towards the purchase of land, since the lot on which the school was located had been donated. When Home Park opened for the school year in 1911, it had eight classrooms, seven teachers, one principal, and a student population of three-hundred-eighty-two pupils. Capacity at Home Park was four-hundred-forty-eight students.  

Home Park School, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 29th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93208222.

Home Park, Atlanta, Wikipedia. Accessed January 22nd 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Park,_Atlanta.