North Brentwood’s Schools (1902, 1925, and 1944)

Wallace A. Bartlett’s original plans for the town from 1891 identified the location for a school building on a large lot at the corners of School Street (Wallace Road) and Banner Street. These plans came to fruition in 1902 when a one-room frame schoolhouse, measuring sixteen by twelve feet, was built on the site. The Brentwood Colored School’s trustees Henry Randall, Peter Randall, and William Redd were named during the same year. Within this small-scale structure, two teachers educated children in the first through seventh grades. Overflow classroom space was rented by Virginia “Mother” Holmes of School Street, herself an entrepreneur of a variety of businesses including a bakery and “cook shop.” Children in the first and second grades held their classes in Ms. Holmes’s living room to account for the small size of the school building.

Only minimal changes were made to the school’s size between 1902 and the town’s incorporation in 1924, when the Board of Education for Prince George’s County approved the building of a three-teacher school to align with the town’s growing population. The three-teacher school, also known as North Brentwood’s Rosenwald School, opened in 1925 on the same lot as the small schoolhouse. Children who did not attend the Brentwood Colored School or the Rosenwald School often attended private school at Sadie Ingram’s home, located at 4517 41st Avenue (formerly Highland Avenue).

The Rosenwald School’s building was, like the town’s origins, the product of entrepreneurship: In 1922, the town’s delegation appeared before the Board of Education offering to raise $5,000 towards the construction of a new, four-room school. The school’s building was approved only in 1924, a $6,000 structure identified by the Julius Rosenwald Fund as a “three-teacher” type. Rather than having to contribute funds directly to the building project, Prince George’s County funded $5,100 of the cost, and the Rosenwald Fund the additional $900. The town’s attention to improving its infrastructure–including building a town hall, purchasing a fire-fighting apparatus, and adding electric streetlights–proved the residents’ commitment to developing North Brentwood for the future.

The town’s continually growing population eventually led to the construction of a third school building in 1944 on the same corner of School and Banner Streets. The third and final school building was a six-room brick structure, with an auditorium and library, closed only in 1969 on the County’s urging after desegregation. The North Brentwood school was demolished, and today, the site is marked by tennis courts.

Sources

"North Brentwood Elementary School, Teachers, and Principal, 1949. Principal John Davis and teachers, left to right, Adela Hallman Johnson, Evelyn Gladden Blackshire, Henrietta Johnson Drew (standing), Eleanor Baltimore (at the typewriter), and Winifred Farmer" (Courtesy of Winifred Farmer in Frank Harold Wilson’s Footsteps from North Brentwood: From Reconstruction to the Post-World War II Years, 1998, p. 12)

"Mr. Joseph Parker coordinated the ‘Operation REACH’ program through the school which provided educational, literacy, training, and cultural activities to children and parents. The acronym REACH stood for Raising the Educational Achievement of Child and Home.” (Courtesy of Joseph Parker in Frank Harold Wilson’s Footsteps from North Brentwood: From Reconstruction to the Post-World War II Years, 1998, p. 13)

Three Teacher Community School Plan, from Community School Plans (Nashville, TN: Rosenwald Fund, 1924). Courtesy of Dr. Tom Hanchett (HistorySouth.org).