A once-imposing and important piece of African American history in Lexington and Kentucky went up in flames on the night of January 3, 2022. Although local news sources referred to the building as an “old church building,” the structure located between Georgetown Street and Newtown Pike was first known as the Chandler Normal School and served as a bedrock of education for the African American community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Late 19th century depiction of the Chandler Normal School.
The Chandler School grew out of the Howard School, founded in Lexington in 1866 and supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau and the American Missionary Society (AMA). The Howard School was first located in a Methodist Church on Church Street. The school later moved to a two-story frame building at the corner of Corrall and Lincoln (now Race) Streets, in the East End Neighborhood.
The Howard School deteriorated from overcrowding and lack of financial support. In 1882, in response to a plea from the principal of the Howard School, the AMA returned to Kentucky and began to seek a new location for their educational efforts. Mrs. Phoebe Chandler, a wealthy philanthropist from of Massachusetts, provided the money ($17,000) to purchase the four acres between Georgetown and Newtown, where the school building would be constructed.
Section of the 1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing the Chandler Normal School.
The original façade had a square three-story tower that was originally four stories, but its upper level and roof were later reconfigured. The formal dedication of the “elegant new school building”* took place on February 10, 1890. The Lexington Leader stated that the exercises commemorating the occasion were “an intellectual treat.”*
South elevation of the school (the original facade). Circa 2012 photograph.
No matter how the media of the time portrayed the opening of the school (and I won’t digress into a diatribe about how the African American community was ignored and belittled by the press), the school was a statement in brick and stone.
It was stylish, solidly built, and monumental in scale. The Chandler Normal School was a symbol of the importance of education and would, I think, inspire any student that entered through the double doors at the base of the four-story central tower.
The south elevation of the Chandler Normal School, January 5, 2022.
The school stood three stories high, a pyramidal-roofed, roughly square-massed, brick structure with Richardsonian Romanesque details. Its façade was divided into three bays by a central, projecting, main entrance tower. Another façade entrance sheltered by a wooden, bracketed shed roof hood was located in the bay to its left.
North elevation of the Chandler School.
Windows in the school were mainly two-over-two double-hung sash windows, with approximately eight original windows along each side. The first and second story windows were topped by square transoms and the third story windows bore semicircular transoms with arches and voussoirs above. All of the windows had stone lintels and sills.
North elevation of the Chandler Normal School, January 5, 2022.
Between 1889 and 1923, the the Chandler Normal School educated most of the future African American teachers in Lexington and Central Kentucky. The school originally had only eight grades, but eventually expanded to include all 12. The curriculum was standard, but particular attention was paid to music, athletics, and debate, as well as the instillation of high moral and religious standards.
From the September 26, 1919 edition of the Lexington Herald.
Graduates included many, many well-known educators and influential members of the African American community, as well as Vertner Woodson Tandy, a nationally known architect and the first African American registered as an architect in the state of New York. Tandy was also one of the first African Americans to be made a member of the American Institute of Architects. He designed Webster Hall, the the teacher’s and principal’s residence for the Chandler Normal School, in 1914.
Vertner Woodson Tandy, graduate of the Chandler Normal School.
Dunbar High School opened in 1923, the same year that the Chandler Normal School closed. The building was then purchased by the First Congregational Church of Lexington, and was rechristened Chandler Memorial Congregational Church. It seems fitting that the Chandler Normal School became a church after its role as education facility ended, since churches provided the first organized schooling of any kind for African American children in Lexington after the Civil War.
In 1960, it was bought by the National Temple House of God,** and several additions were added to the original building, and the four acres surrounding the school developed with a complex of one-story concrete block apartments (Lincoln Terrace).
I was approached by investors five or six years ago about the possibility of utilizing historic tax credits to renovate the former school. The Chandler Normal School and Webster Hall were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and tax credits are a great boon to many projects on historic buildings. Sadly, despite several conversations, the project never went anywhere.
I suppose the Chandler School languished in slight disrepair and emptiness, until Monday night. It’s such a waste that this grand building, once a beacon of hope and opportunity, met such a tragic end.
*February 10, 1890 edition of The Lexington Leader
** The House of God operated its national temple out of the Chandler School from 1960 until it was sold in 2015.
Very interesting. Another part of black history was ignored and destroyed and forgotten. Some of us will never know the history in this structure
Hard to believe it was still standing after being so neglected. A missed opportunity for sure.
Thank you, Janie for this tribute. I am truly saddened that the three owners – one of them an African American investment group – who envisioned the restoration and repurposing of this building were unable to obtain the funding to do so.