In 1979, former students of Main Street School listened in dismay. The red-bricked, white-columned, three-story building where they spent much of their childhood was being torn down.

“I hated to see it go. I think everyone that went to Main Street was just devastated to see that building come down,” said Tony Herrington, who attended the school from 1959 to 1961. “I’m almost positive that Main Street was the oldest school, which seems even more reason you’d want to keep it.”

The school was shut down several years before. The land it was on was purchased by Hall County to build the Law Enforcement Center, which at the time included the Hall County Jail.

“The school was no longer in use when the county purchased the property. It was an available piece of property and it was located near the courthouse so it was ideal for transporting prisoners,” said Nikki Young, public information officer for Hall County. “For the longest time (before the jail on Barber Street opened) the jail was on Main Street. They moved into the Law Enforcement Center in 1982.”

The beginnings of Main Street School possibly date back to the late 1800s.

At that time, when Gainesville City Schools district was in its infancy, a building known as Gainesville College existed on South Main Street. That was probably a high school, as those were known as colleges until the early 20th century, officials at the Northeast Georgia History Center said.

“This building was to be sold to the highest bidder for cash on Sept. 15, 1902, and the building moved off the lot in 30 days,” according to “Pictorial History of Hall County,” compiled by Sybil McRay. “The building did not sell, and much of the materials were used in the construction of a new school building.”

Main Street School was built around 1906, C.J. Cheeves, former superintendent of Gainesville City Schools, said in his March 1939 address to the Rotary Club. A photo in the Hall County Library System’s files dates its construction to 1903.

McRay’s book depicts students in high school and middle school grades at Main Street in the early 1900s. Some time over the next 50 years, it became a first- through seventh-grade school, and by the 1960s, it was first through sixth grades.

“The building was beautiful with polished wooden floors. There was a cloakroom for each classroom, and on rainy days we played marbles in there at recess,” former student Gerald Caston said in an email to The Times. “We had the highest swings, a big merry-go-round and a jungle gym.”

Caston went to Main Street up to fourth grade and again in seventh. Prior to his attendance, a streetcar ran in front of Main Street School, but in his time most people walked. His sister and two friends were walking there on the morning of the 1936 tornado and had to take shelter under a porch.

In those days, school didn’t start until after Labor Day and it ended in May.

“We used tablets and pencils, no technology to speak of. We didn’t use ink pens until high school and we had study hall every day,” Caston said.

And even though they were much smaller than their Gainesville High Red Elephant and the E.E. Butler High Tiger counterparts, football played a big role in the lives of city elementary schoolchildren.

Candler Street School had the Colts and the Greenies, Enota had the Hawks and the Rams. Miller Park had a team as well, but what Herrington and Jack Waldrip remember is playing for the Main Street Baby Red Elephants.

“We played on the football team there and won the championship. We played all the other elementary schools like Candler and Enota. That’s one of my fondest memories,” Waldrip said.

Waldrip, who attended in the 1950s and ’60s, was a patrol boy at Main Street. Select students were pulled out of class to perform crossing guard duties for the children who walked to and from school.

“We used to help the other kids cross the street and we felt real important doing that,” Waldrip said. “It was kind of a big thing.”

Main Street School for a time was the only city school to have special education classrooms, Herrington said.
Caston said school then was much less complicated that it is now — so much so that he almost didn’t go.

“My first day of first grade was almost my last. I walked home for lunch, as all students did, and informed my mother that I had learned all there was to learn at that school and I didn’t need to go back,” Caston said. “She followed me back with a hickory switch and I never tried that again.”

Gainesville City Schools Superintendent Merrianne Dyer is unsure exactly why Main Street School closed.“It appeared to be part of a reorganization of schools after the schools were integrated,” she said in an email to The Times.

“At that time, 1969 to 1970, the city schools started the era of housing all of the city’s students in each grade at one building. It is likely that the decision about which buildings to remain open was due to the age and infrastructure of the building.”

Old or not, most Main Street alumni were dissatisfied the building was demolished, though they understood to an extent why it was deemed necessary.

“It could have been used to house offices or other businesses at the time. It was by far the prettiest building in Gainesville,” Caston said. “When it was torn down, it destroyed so many memories for so many of us.”