#23: The Old Barnard Street School and SCAD’s Pepe Hall

“It is my opinion that this Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the Colonies…The Gentleman asks: ‘When were the Colonies emancipated?’ I desire to know when were they made slaves?”

—William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1766)

The Old Barnard Street School and SCAD’s Pepe Hall

I have a deeply personal and nostalgic love for this beautiful building, primarily because I attended some of my favorite classes here while I studied art at SCAD; and also because this building reminds me of the school I attended as a child.

Like this building, my school back in the former U.S.S.R. featured a large bell tower and was likely completed around the same time period — back when a Tsar was in control of Russia.

My mother worked long hours and my father was well out of our family picture, so my daily routine was getting my much younger sister up early in the morning, face washed, then dressed, fed breakfast, and finally walked (if not dragged) to school. The sound of the bell in the tower ringing while I was pulling her along was the unfortunate signal that we were again late for school — a very frequent occurrence!

In 1988, SCAD purchased four abandoned Victorian District Savannah school buildings, to include the Barnard Street School, the Anderson Street School, the 37th Street School, and the Beach Institute.

The old Barnard Street School located off Chatham Square was finished in 1906. It replaced the original Barnard Street Elementary School built on this spot in 1854; the very first public school in Savannah. General William Tecumseh Sherman used the original school building as a military hospital after he presented Savannah to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift toward the end of the Civil War in 1864.

The new building was built in the Mediterranean Revival architectural style and was another in a long line of gorgeous buildings renovated by the Savannah College of Art and Design.

In 2009, SCAD renamed the 20,759 square-foot building Pepe Hall, in honor of Dr. Marie Pepe, a distinguished art historian and long valued member of SCAD’s Board of Trustees. It became the location of SCAD’s Fibers Department.

Chatham Square, as well as Chatham County where Savannah is located, was named after William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The Earl of Chatham played a crucial leadership role in the British Cabinet during Europe’s Seven Year’s War — which was known as the ‘French and Indian War’ in its North American colonies; a war that involved a young officer named George Washington, then in his early twenties.

The Earl of Chatham would take up the colonial position during arguments against the Stamp Act in the prelude to the American Revolution.

William Pitt’s son, who was known as William Pitt the Younger, would later serve as a distinguished Prime Minister of Great Britain, like his father. Pitt the Younger would go on to work closely with William Wilberforce to abolish the slave trade in the Atlantic; both helped pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

The Royal Navy’s 60-year campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade is majestically told in Peter Grindal’s book: Opposing the Slavers: The Royal Navy’s Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade.