Formerly a hay barn, this 1912 Rosenwald School will open in June on the grounds of a museum. (Columbia Historical Museum)

For nearly 50 years, travelers driving down Highway 35 in East Columbia, Tex., just south of Houston, whizzed by a national treasure without even knowing it.

In fact, the wood barn, used to store hay for decades, is a Rosenwald School built in 1921. This spring, workers are finishing its $80,000 restoration.

Five years ago, Columbia Historical Museum President Emma Womack learned from a local historian that the hay barn on Highway 35 was in fact an old Rosenwald School--one of 5,300 built in 15 southern states between 1917 and 1932 as part of an initiative by Sears, Roebuck & Co. President Julius Rosenwald and black educator Booker T. Washington to build schools in the rural south for black students.

Rosenwald Schools were hubs of rural African American life in the 1930s and 40s throughout the South. So few have survived that in 2002 the National Trust for Historic Preservation put them on the list of the country's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places and soon after launched the Rosenwald Initiative to establish a unified effort to uncover and restore the forgotten buildings.

In mid-June, the relocated, restored East Columbia School will open to the public as a permanent, walk-in exhibit at the Columbia Historical Museum.

"The inside is about 20 percent from completion and about 10 to 15 percent of the outside isn't entirely ready to go," says Bill Womack, Emma Womack's son and director of the restoration project.

The Rosenwald School before

After painting, wiring, insulating, and installing air conditioning and heating, workers are now refinishing the floors of the former barn and adding bricks to its chimney. A handicapped-accessible ramp must be installed before it can be open to the public.

The majority of the funding for the project has come from local industries and organizations, including BASF Corp., Dow Chemical Co., and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Southwest Office.

Local residents who attended the East Columbia School donated the original teacher's chair and three desks and have formed an alumni association. They have also been interviewed several times by Gensler Inc., the Houston-based architectural firm that has assisted Bill Womack with the restoration, so that the school is as authentic as possible.

"We want to make it so that it matches the building as it was first constructed," Bill Womack says.

The school closed in 1949 when its students transferred to West Columbia. It was sold and moved to the pasture, where it was forgotten.

Emma Womack and Morris Richardson, the historian who spotted the barn, convinced the owners to donate it to the museum. In 2004, with money from the county, they were able to move it from its East Columbia location to its current location on a plot of land behind the museum, which is in West Columbia.

"We are terribly excited to have it here with us," Emma Womack says.

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