The Rebirth of the Franklin Street School

For too many years, the vacant structure on Franklin Street sat crumbling from disuse, a silent reminder of America’s discriminatory history—built as a school to educate Cape May’s African American children and closed when segregation officially ended. Rather than demolishing this building, members of the community recognized that the bones were still strong and were intent on saving it. Years later the preservation and restoration of Franklin Street School has resulted in the beautiful new Cape May Library, as well as the new home to the Center for Community Arts and WCFA, Cape May’s radio station.  

The Early Days

Franklin Street School opened in 1928 as an elementary school for Cape May’s African American children. Kindergartners through 8th graders moved from the dilapidated Annex school that had been built for white students in 1865, then used for Black children when Lafayette Street School opened in 1901 to accommodate the white students. The stately concrete block, brick and mortar structure had spacious and airy rooms, naturally well-lit by huge windows. It reflected a national philosophy of civic pride that is still evident in municipal structures throughout the country.

When the Black children graduated from 8th grade they moved to Lafayette Street School, at first into segregated classrooms.

Shortly after the school was constructed, a gym was added to the rear for use primarily by Cape May High School students, whose facility, now Cape May City Hall, did not have an adequate gym. The two parts of the structure were divided by a solid cement block wall with no door. The addition is on grade—an architectural term for ground level—while the main building’s basement situates it below grade.  At that time, it was a construction challenge to create access between the two parts, so the school children were effectively shut out from moving from the school section to the gym. They did use the gym in bad weather, even though it meant going outside of the school then back inside through the gym doors. 

Franklin Street School served its purpose from 1928 to 1948, when New Jersey outlawed segregation in public schools. The building closed, and the students moved around the corner into now-integrated classes in Lafayette Street School. There they all stayed until that building was demolished in the mid-1960s, and the present Cape May Elementary School opened. Middle and high school students have attended regional schools in Lower Township since then.

The school building remained mostly closed for several years, intermittently serving as a summer police station, a storage area for stolen bikes, and during the Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs, a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) facility. Former Franklin Street School student John Nash, who owned an upholstery business, taught his trade there; former Lafayette Street student Wanda Wise Evelyn worked for CETA for three years, first at the city’s summer camp held in the school’s basement. 

Eventually the building was judged uninhabitable. Gradually holes wore into the roof, and windows broke, enabling pigeons and gulls and who knows what else to make their homes inside, depositing their remains throughout. Mildew—and worse—set in. The building was shut down, but not demolished. 

A New Idea

In 1993 an incident on the boardwalk between rowdy teenagers and the police prompted the need for a place for kids to meet and have fun without getting into trouble. Twelve women artists and community activists, six Black, six white, gathered at the kitchen table in Caroline Peterson’s Cold Spring home to discuss solutions. The city needs a community center, they decided, and Franklin Street School looks like a good prospect.

Several meetings later the Center for Community Arts was born. The group borrowed desk space in the tiny front office of Allen AME Church and began to design arts programs and other activities for neighborhood children and to approach the city about restoring Franklin Street School. 

CCA board members led by Caroline Peterson began negotiating with Cape May City Council to lease the building to the organization and start what promised to be a gargantuan renovation process. 

The building was leased to CCA in 2001. Fundraising had already started to finance the arts programs and to save the building.  

Current CCA Executive Director David Mackenzie was a member of the organization’s board of directors and its Finance and Facilities Committees. He states, “We had our initial plans as a community center and CCA use for the building, but what we really wanted to do was save the building – it was always our ultimate objective and our ultimate mission. There was no discussion, no possibility at all that the building was ever going to be demolished.”

To find out what confronted them, the Facilities Committee consisting of Mackenzie, Master carpenter Milt Edelman, and Edelman’s friend and fellow carpenter Curtis Read, ventured into the building.

“Those were just walk-throughs,” recalls Mackenzie. “It was very dirty and had a lot of environmental issues with bird waste and dirt and mold. There was only one pipe with asbestos, which surprised us; we expected a lot more given the vintage of the building. [We saw] lots of water damage from leaks in the windows and roof. Broken windows allowed birds to get inside. It had been effectively abandoned by the city.

“The exterior was also interesting. We knew the windows were in bad shape; you could tell by looking at them. Because the building is brick and masonry, any damage or age or environmental problems were not real obvious. We thought that the bones of the building were still very good and therefore the building would be restorable.”

Milt Edelman and the others concurred. “That’s always a concern; no matter how socially or historically valuable the building might be, in a practical sense can it be restored? We never had a question about the ability to restore the building true to its original construction.”

Edelman, Mackenzie, and “a rotating cast of characters” worked through the environmental remediation and the stabilization process. But, recalls Milt, “None were more knowledgeable and valuable than [now retired West Cape May architect] Fred Long, who actually knew his way around this sort of work and was more organized and focused in a way we needed. 

“With that help we managed to remediate a very unhealthy situation and stabilize a deteriorating building. Work could not have been completed without that initial effort,” Milt believes. “I could not be happier that the job got done even though in a way none of us could have imagined, and that people kept the faith.” 

“We had at the start very aggressive local fundraising—not reaching out to other foundations or institutions,” said Mackenzie. “During that period, up through 2006-07 we had around 70 individual local donors just for the building project itself, not for CCA programs or operations, and over those years raised a total of around $300,000 from individual donors and some events. Most were direct appeals to local families and businesses, gifts from a couple of thousand to $40,000.”

Michael Calafati, the architect responsible for the final restoration of Franklin Street School, had been intermittently involved from the early days of stabilization. “The first day I came to this project was on Monday, September 10, 2001. I know because I surveyed it for the first time that day, and the next morning as I was driving to my office in Trenton there was a report that a plane hit the World Trade Center. That’s why I realize how long this project has been,” said Califati.

The windows were removed and sent to a restorer, and plywood was installed with little vents to allow air so the building wouldn’t mildew all over again. “The windows were falling out,” Calafati recalls. “When the windows were failing it would let water in, and it pooled on the original floorboards, and they became punky and started to rot. So, when we restored the windows the first time, we were surgical about how the old wood was taken out and later refinished.”

The building was stabilized, but the recession of 2006 to 2008 dried up funding.

And even after the recession, work went slowly for a long time, or there was none at all. The building had been stabilized, and just kind of sat there for about five years.

There was one job: to install some masonry anchors. That was attempted in 2008-09, but the corner that the contractor was working in was so damaged and eroded that they couldn’t continue. Locals might remember a tall fence going up around the corner facing the firehouse at that time. It was to keep people from getting too close to the building in case bricks fell from the unstable masonry.

All this time the former gym remained open and in use, sometimes for performances, but mostly for exercise programs sponsored by Cape May City Recreation Department. It was not closed until the final restoration began in 2021.

When CCA began its first attempts to save the building, the organization and supporters faced a measure of opposition from some members of the public and hesitation on the part of city officials. Franklin Street School was “Preserved . . .by the State Historic Preservation Trust Fund” as a site contributing to New Jersey’s African American History. Over the years the attitudes of many locals changed from doubt or opposition to expansive support for restoration and re-use of the building, now valued for its history. Mackenzie became Executive Director in 2014, as activity in support of preservation picked up, “in part because of a very supportive environment from the city.” 

Then-Mayor Edward Mahaney began discussions with Stockton University, which was in an expansion mode. He suggested that the building might become one of Stockton’s off-site campuses. But the expansion program stopped, and again the building stood empty, but stable. Then some citizens led by Roger Furlin suggested it could be a senior center, since it had plenty of room for activities and classes. Surveys circulated, asking the public for suggestions. CCA was part of that discussion, and brought in architect Bob Russell, who submitted some draft drawings on what a senior center could look like using the entire building. 

During those years, as the city was starting to take the lead in the discussions, “it became obvious that the project was going to be significantly more expensive than had ever been envisioned at the start,” said Mackenzie. “Our original construction guess when we signed the lease was about $2 million.”  Over time, both naturally through inflation and changes in the construction market added to required changes in the building, and projected costs rose. “We became aware that we were having problems with that kind of fundraising.” 

An Eye for Potential

In 2016, Chuck Lear was running for Cape May mayor when a resident approached him and “put the bug in my ear about [how we needed a new library],” Lear said. “My thought initially was to look for a new piece of ground” on which to construct a new building. But then he looked at the city property on Franklin Street where the vacant school stood. “I was familiar with it from years of working at the police department and that it was in pretty bad shape, and I knew that CCA had a long-term lease on the building and had been in the process of maintenance and restoring it.” It looked like “the perfect project.”

Patricia Hendricks was a candidate for City Council, and the two began a conversation. She observed that “The county library tax was just under a million dollars, and our local library didn’t have any services, yet we were paying the same as other local libraries that offered all those services and resources. So, we toured all the county libraries to see the types of services provided so that when we eventually chose a building it could handle some of those great things that the county library does.”

Marie Hayes at the time was the County Commissioner with responsibility for the library system. Lear approached her with their ideas, and she particularly liked the idea of using the city-owned building rather than seeking vacant land and constructing a new facility.

“Ideally,” Hendricks says, “[the building] is situated close to the elementary school, the housing authority, Victorian Towers—it’s a great public resource. That area is critical for the community. We took a tour with Marie Hayes through the building and realized it was in pretty bad shape.” 

Hayes, now a surrogate judge, spoke at that time about discovering the school – despite living her entire life in the area, she had been unaware of Franklin Street School and its significance. “I saw something I had never seen before,” she declared in a public gathering. 

In 2017 Lear, Hendricks and Hayes started working on a plan, a partnership with Cape May City, Cape May County, and the county Library Commission, and figured out how the financing could be split among the three entities. 

Jerry Thornton, now retired, was the Freeholder Director at that time, and, says Lear, “He went to each meeting from the beginning and went to the library commission saying we want and need this. He brought it over the top and believed in it.” 

Susan Bryant, “brought her background with library systems to help work with the grant writer,” says Lear. Members of the local library committee joined the effort.

Calafati submitted a proposal for a feasibility study in May of 2018. “My services fell under two phases: one was the feasibility study and the second was the actual development of drawings going out to bid and to construction.” The feasibility study started in the fall of 2018 and was finished within six months, with a preliminary budget and a layout of the building, he told us. 

“I collaborated with Arcari Iovino Architects, an award-winning firm that specializes in making libraries. They shared expertise about library planning that I would not have had. Just like my specialty is preservation, their specialty is library design. We submitted the proposal, were selected, and finished the report in about six months. That was 2019.” 

“We wanted to make sure CCA was included at the meetings with the county,” said Lear. “We said we want them to be part of it and have space to continue their mission because they have wanted to preserve it since the beginning.” CCA does, in fact, have new headquarters in the room that was once the kindergarten classroom attended by one of its founding mothers, Emily Dempsey.

By November of 2017, when Lear and Hendricks were elected to Cape May City Council, they had studied the requirements of historic preservation. When guidelines were issued, “we were ready to hit the decks,” said Hendricks. She speaks of Calafati’s proposed design as “a marriage of purpose and function.”

When it was time to present the project proposal to the public, Hendricks remembers, “The turnout at the council meetings was a testament to the community pushing for this to happen; the power of the people was behind this project.” People rose up “in support of these projects in honor of their families to save this building and remember their significant history.” The council meetings were emotional, “which shows there was a whole lotta heart in this project.”

The construction model was issued in November of 2017, and by September 2020 several more grants were awarded that would supplement the funding that the three local partners had already committed to.

“We applied for a New Jersey State library grant in Spring of 2020 and found out by the end of the year that the funding, $3.45 million, was coming through,” said Calafati. “The New Jersey Historic Trust had nearly $600,000 going to the building, and The National Park system granted $500,000. The project funding came all together at the end of 2020, and the drawing took the rest of 2021. In 2022 the project was put out to contractors to bid. We got a bid proposal in July, the county awarded the contract for construction [to Merrell & Garaguso, Inc.] in August, and work began on September 1.”

In May of 2020 The New Jersey Library Association awarded Marie Hayes, Chuck Lear, and Patricia Hendricks the New Jersey Library Heroes award. “We weren’t interested in the kudos,” said Hendricks. “We were interested in the product, and it was amazing that they chose the three of us.” 

In September, when the awards were announced, the two were out of office and ceased direct involvement in the plans, but they held the satisfaction of beginning the final project. “We had the grant and initial designs, and it was nice to get it going,” says Chuck Lear.

The Final Stretch

What was supposed to be a 16-month construction project, done by December of 2023, didn’t come together until June of 2024, says Calafati, “largely because there were some hiccups we had with the windows and the elevator. Because of the required conditions of the elevator under ADA guidelines there are only two elevator companies to choose from. The production line for the windows was often stalled, which held us up with finishing work on the inside.”

Part of the final restoration involved removing things that had been done when the school had been used during earlier projects and during stabilization work.  “The building had temporary petitions and hung ceilings that didn’t belong that were a source of environmental concern,” said Calafati. “These were eventually taken out during the final renovation. We took out a lot of unsympathetic modern changes to the building that in no case would have been deemed historic.”

The building’s brickwork required major restoration. The architects and construction company conducted an analysis to ensure they could recreate the original work, which Calafati describes as “unique. Usually, an expansive brick wall every sixth course (every six bricks)—is called a stretcher. At the end of the brick row, you put a brick in the other way to lock the back up. Well, this building has no header course. So, every two linear feet in a grid pattern we have helical stainless-steel ties that attach the brick back to the backup, so it is much stronger than it was before. This was quite an expense. Of the things that happen to the building, this masonry is one of the things I’m very happy about.”

The most remarkable takeaway from the completion of this project is the teamwork displayed by the many players who truly believed in the building. Each integral figure has expressed thanks to different partners that helped move the process forward and persevere—whether it was advocating at city council meetings or being hands-on in the fight for funding. 

This building is proof that the voice of the community has power, and that history is something to be honored. A building that once was a neglected, derelict reminder of our nation’s discriminatory social climate now serves to bring people together and promote knowledge. It has come a long way, and this is only the beginning of the story. More about how the new Cape May Library actively serves the community in our next issue.