Rock Building reopens

Published 7:26 am Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The year Sherman Leonard graduated from Murray County High School, someone typed a caption under his picture in the 1956 yearbook predicting he would remodel the Empire State Building.

“This,” Leonard said during a dedication of the old Rock Building on Tuesday, “is my Empire State Building … This is probably the most proud I’ve been of a building.”

Leonard Brothers Construction of Chatsworth was awarded the contract to remodel the building after it burned during a September 2009 fire that began when the building was struck by lightning. Experts at first told school officials their historic 1934 structure was too badly damaged to be rebuilt. Upon closer inspection, construction experts determined it could be refurbished and made usable again. Work began on the site in March 2010 and is complete except for some work on the grounds.

The structure will become the new central office for Murray County Schools with more than 15 employees moving into the building this week and over spring break next week.

The preservation effort earned the community an excellence in rehabilitation award from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. Architectural historian Erin Kane said the photos of the Rock Building “got the most oohs and aahs” when pictures of projects around the state were shown at an awards presentation in Macon over the weekend. Hundreds of people gathered for the dedication at the building as Kane spoke, many standing, others spilling out into the hallways for lack of space in the main room.

“From the outside, it looks like the building (only) got new windows,” Kane said. “It looks like you really haven’t done anything. They just did an immaculate job on the reconstruction.”

The $1.7 million job was paid for entirely with insurance money. Damage to the building’s rock walls was repaired using only the original stone. The basic structure of the building stayed the same, even featuring an octagonal reception area as before.

The Rock Building was the first consolidated high school in Murray County and was used for decades, first as Murray County High School, then as Bagley Middle School. For several years until recently, it was used primarily for storage after the building fell into disrepair with no financial means to fix it. Community members raised more than $100,000 just to buy a new roof shortly before it burned.

“A lot of our employees have had payroll deductions month after month after month,” Superintendent Vickie Reed said.

By then, said Larry Sampson, who taught at the Rock Building, the structure was in “terrible repair” even with the new roof. The inside of the building, he said, “would have made you cry.”

“And I was thinking this afternoon — please don’t anybody throw anything at me — I wondered maybe if that lightning strike might not be considered in the future a kind of a blessing because without it, and without that fire, I wonder if this building would ever come back to the glory that it is now.”