Second Ward alumni interact with architects at CMS community information meeting
When Maxine Wallace was in first grade, she dreamed about going to Second Ward High School.
The Charlotte native grew up only two blocks away from Second Ward, the first high school in Charlotte, which opened in 1923 for Black students. The school offered a well-rounded education and provided nurturing environment for Black youth during the Jim Crow era of intense segregation laws. It gave Wallace a safe place to learn and make friends.
The school was torn down in 1969 as part of the city’s urban renewal targeting the historic Black neighborhood Brooklyn. Now more than five decades later, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School district plans to rebuild the beloved academy, using $175 million approved during a 2023 bond referendum, and will rename it Second Ward Medical and Technology Magnet High School.
On Thursday evening, Wallace, along with other alumni, voiced their hopes for the new school during a community information meeting at West Charlotte High School.
“I wanted to come out to this because I wanted to know after 50-plus years what they were planning, because they promised us in 1969 that we would get another school,” said Wallace, who graduated in 1965. “I didn’t know I would be a million years later, but better late than never.”
Attendees visited stations set up by architectural firm LS3P. Each station offered alumni the opportunity to share memories or their vision for the new school with the architectural team.
At one station, LS3P team members presented attendees with potential spaces in the new school, including a telehealth training center, biology lab and individual study spaces.
Attendees spoke about the different ways students learn and how spaces should accommodate those learning styles, Shehara Hepuarachy, an architect with LS3P told The Charlotte Observer. The Charleston, SC-based firm will consider community feedback in the new school’s design process.
The most crowded station provided site models of the campus and gave attendees the chance to design the new school using blocks representing different campus buildings. Here, alumni chatted with each other and LS3P architects, recounting their favorite classes and their locations on campus.
Wallace said Second Ward provided shop, drafting, masonry and auto mechanics.
“They taught everything,” she said. “And you could get a job right out of high school, and own your own business.”
The new Second Ward will reflect and honor the school’s vocational history, Dennis LaCaria, CMS executive director of facilities management said. It’s LaCaria’s hope that alumni and the community recognize that the project is moving forward.
“This is a school that’s been promised to a community for a very long time, and a promise that hasn’t been kept,” LaCaria said. “And we’re actually keeping that promise.”
The new Second Ward’s design process will be longer than the average new school building, and the community will have more opportunities to share their feedback on the project as it continues, LaCaria said.
Demolition and site clearing will begin in October and end by April 2025. The project will remain in the design and permitting phase until October 2025. The school will be completed by late 2028.
Mecklenburg County Commissioner and Second Ward alumnus Arthur Griffin said he hopes the spirit of excellence makes its way into the new school.
“I think if they knew their past, that would aid in the excitement of their future,” he said. “To see what people were able to do with so little, and they have so much.”
