Old School Auditorium

construction underway

Waterford's Old School, brand new

A brand new school, full of students (and before the first auditorium was built), in 1911.

At the Old School Auditorium groundbreaking ceremony on July 1, Waterford Foundation archivist and board member Bronwen Souders provided a few highlights of the school's history.

With the Waterford School, as with many other institutions, history repeats itself. The school has faced crises before, and weathered them in the 140 years since the Commonwealth of Virginia legislated the first state-wide public school system in 1871.

In August 1872, patrons and friends met at the former private Waterford Academy, where county superintendent Wildman explained the working of the new public school system. The school trustees appointed a committee of two Quaker men and William Mount, one of our furniture makers, to raise money to pay the teachers. By the end of the meeting, they had gathered $236, about half the money needed, and expected they would obtain the rest "with little effort." As a reporter put it, "It is evident that the people of this ancient town are alive to the best interest of their children, and are determined to have for them good Schools."[1] 

The public Waterford Academy--on this site--educated two generations of local scholars until a cold February night in 1909, when there was a problem with the heating system. Sound familiar? The janitor, the gloriously named Hector Tecumseh Calhoun Hough, left a bucket of ashes on the oiled floor, and within hours the school was no more. The Baptist church across the street stepped up to provide classroom space for the children until September 1910, when classes resumed in a new building--the Greek Revival structure we cherish today. It cost a grand total of $6,000, of which about a third was from insurance, a third from private donations, and a third from the State Literary Fund.[2] 

Waterford again had a fine school here, as we do now, but not the auditorium we fondly remember. For nearly 20 years after this building was erected, graduations and other school events were held at Paxson's Hall, above a rickety livery stable next to the Pink House in the middle of town. It was hot in the warm months, cold in the winter, and featured ancient folding chairs advertising Piedmont Cigarettes--chairs prone to collapse without warning.

Finally, at a meeting on July 29, 1927--84 years ago next month, a committee of five men--Doug Myers (uncle of current Waterford resident Janet Jewell), R.C. Compher, W.E. Steele (at Talbott Farm), Fred Stabler of the Phillips Farm, and his neighbor R. E. McCarty--made an agreement with the Loudoun County School Board: The Board would provide $6,000 for a new auditorium, coincidentally the same amount as the school had cost 20 years earlier.[3] 

But the school board refused to fund such luxuries as electricity, heating, furniture, and a stage curtain. So Marilyn Gentry's grandmother Josephine Carr and John Divine's mother Nanny, wife of Eb Divine who was building the auditorium, held bake sales, put on plays and did anything they could think of to raise money for their new auditorium, just as we are doing today. It took several years to collect the needed amount. For the first few high school graduations in the new facility, they salvaged the old Piedmont Cigarette chairs "from downtown."

At the baccalaureate of the class of 1929 (all of two students) the wide open windows let in breezes on a hot day, and the featured speaker read from a large stack of papers. One gust caught the pile and scattered it to the floor. Suddenly struck dumb, the speaker threw up his hands and said, "Oh, well." Most in the audience didn't think it was very interesting anyway.[4]