Jody Lahendro and Will Rourk are on a mission preserving black history in 3D. While both men are University of Virginia alumni with master’s degrees in architectural history, they approach the task differently. Lahendro, a former UVA Facilities Management preservation architect, applies a Stanley folding rule, producing intricate building diagrams on graph paper, noting all salient details.
Rourk, who teaches architectural preservation, arrives on a preservation site with a pickup truck of equipment and a caravan of graduate students. Together, the group makes laser scans of buildings and artifacts that are fed into a computer to create an exacting virtual model of the building, something a person can “walk through” with virtual reality goggles.
The two men are currently working to preserve a Rosenwald School in Newtown, Virginia. Rosenwald Schools originated in 1912 through a partnership between Booker T. Washington, then president of the Tuskegee Institute, who recognized the educational needs of rural African Americans; and Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears & Roebuck at the time, who provided the seed money. The buildings, dedicated to educating African American students, followed a template for one-, two- and three-teacher schools, with simple yet elegant utilitarian designs.
“The community had to put up approximately a third of the funds for getting the schools built,” Lahendro said. “The state had to put up another third, and then Rosenwald put up a third.”
Albemarle County was once home to seven Rosenwald Schools. Two were demolished; three were converted into houses and drastically renovated. The St. John’s Rosenwald School in Cobham has been converted into a community center, a project Lahendro and Rourk worked on. The final one in Albemarle County is a jewel: the Newtown Rosenwald School, built in 1926, located in the western part of the county.
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