Trussville school lintel upheld for century

The concrete book is split through the spine and the arch is cracked in multiple places, but it is still here.

The lintel, also called a doorway headstone, above the double doors at Hewitt Elementary School, the building you may not even know about, lives on a century after its construction. 

Trussville’s first school, the Trussville Academy, was founded in 1869 by Robert Greene Hewitt, a professor from Jefferson County. The one-room log cabin, 60 feet by 40 feet, accommodated 100 students and was located between present-day Main Street and the railroad tracks at South Chalkville Road. Hewitt later donated his property to the community and another larger school was built on the site of what is now Trussville First United Methodist Church. The building served as the community’s grammar school from 1903 to 1938, when it became the church.

In 1922, however, a new school was constructed across the street from the grammar school, in the area of the current Trussville City Schools Central Office. That lintel rested atop the entryway. In 1925, the new building became known as R.G. Hewitt High School, and a total of 11 students formed its first graduating class in 1927. In 1938, the building became Hewitt Elementary School, as a result of a new Hewitt High School being constructed by the government on modern-day Parkway Drive along with the formation of the Cahaba Project. The new high school housed the 10th through 12th grades. One room on the south side of the building was used as a nursery and kindergarten for Cahaba residents. The Hewitt Elementary School on Chalkville Road housed grades 1 through 9.

As Trussville grew, R.G. Hewitt High School expanded to house students in grades 7 through 12, and Jefferson County contracted for a junior high school. At the same time, Hewitt Elementary School on Chalkville Road was overcrowded. The Hewitt Elementary School Annex on Cherokee Drive opened in 1969 for the second and third grades. The construction of that school was timely, as well as necessary, because on May 10, 1973 the elementary school on Chalkville Road, the one with the lintel about the front doors, burned to the ground. The fire happened during school hours at about 11:30 a.m., and all fourth, fifth and sixth grade students, about 600 in total, were evacuated. The students’ bottle cap collection, a two-year process that was up to 937,000 bottle caps, was destroyed. The students were trying to collect one million bottle caps in a bin. Firefighters from Trussville, Center Point, Birmingham and Springville worked to extinguish the fire, which would have likely spread to nearby homes had they not arrived in time. There were no injuries in the fire.

“Part of me burned up today,” Elizabeth Parkel told then-Trussville Mayor Alton Williams, according to a May 11, 1973, article in The Birmingham News. “You know I taught here for years. We worked so hard getting all those books, and now they’re gone.”

In a collection of comments housed at the Heritage Hall Museum, students recounted that day. Bill Aliff said his class had just returned from lunch when a teacher hollered about the fire.

“We went outside and waited and after a while you could see the flames,” he said. “And then we could see our school was gone. And everybody was crying. Then we went in the church and sang until the bus got there. Then we went home.”

For the remainder of that school year, classes took place in the Trussville Methodist Church and the nearby former First National Bank building. Portable classrooms were used for the 1973 fall term until additions could be made to the annex school on Cherokee Drive, which became the only elementary school in the city.

For years, that lintel lay in the area behind what is now Carroll Pharmacy, said Trussville Historical Board member Jane Alexander. She, along with former Trussville Historical Society member Donnette Plant, went looking for it.

“The lintel is just about all that is left except for some artifacts in the museum,” said Alexander, who started school there in 1948. “When the decision was made to spruce up and open the museum for the public, this is the first thing we went looking for.”

Some of those salvaged artifacts the museum preserves include a microscope with its wooden case, a Bradley’s Block printing kit and a section of flooring.

Trussville City Schools Superintendent Pattie Neill said the lintel had been stored in the current Hewitt-Trussville Middle School courtyard for decades. When Plant worked at the middle school, Neill said, she asked if the lintel could be transferred to the Trussville Historical Society. The Trussville City Schools Board of Education approved the transfer in 2019.

It’s been 100 years since that lintel and its features were shaped, since it was inscribed with “Trussville School” across the arch and “1922” on the underside. It survived the Great Depression, World War II, a massive fire and a forklift ride to Heritage Hall.

“It’s still here,” Alexander said. “Somebody thought to save it.”