Dear Ace: Every time I drive past the Covenant School building on the 250 Bypass, I notice that it says “McIntire School” on the front. Are they just confused? Or is this some kind of trick question designed to confuse the students? —Wanda Ring Aigh
Dear Wanda: If there’s one thing Ace is proud of, it’s the fact that he paid rapt attention in history class during his own years as a schoolkid. You know: The Thousand Years’ War, Christopher Columbia, Henry VIII and his nine lives… Ace just loves all that stuff. So he’s always happy for a chance to ring up the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and get the dirt on some old building. Uh—about some old building, that is. (Ace does not condone, and has never participated in, the intentional sullying of buildings, old or otherwise.)
So anyway, why does the Covenant School say “McIntire?” For the exact reason you’d think: Because that’s what it used to be, says the society’s librarian Margaret O’Bryant. The school was built in the late 1920s to serve high school students from areas of the county lying to the south and east of the city. This it did for around a quarter century, until the County decided, in 1953, to consolidate McIntire with several other high schools, forming Albemarle High School. (Historical side note: Even back then, in its earliest days, McIntire School faced McIntire Park, which also came into being in the late ‘20s. Ace has been over this before, Wanda, but both school and park—and dozens of other things around town—are named after one Paul Goodloe McIntire, a wealthy stockbroker and philanthropist who grew up here in the 1860s.)
In addition to being a star history pupil, Ace also knows how to use the Internet, which he did with great alacrity in order to locate the information that the Covenant School (a Christian prep school) began using the McIntire building when it was founded in 1985. Covenant bought the building three years later, and by 1995 had grown enough to warrant opening a second campus for its younger students (K through six) on Old Lynchburg Road. These days, it’s the young’uns who use the McIntire facility, while Covenant’s Upper School resides on Hickory Street.
Lest you fret that the McIntire School was sitting unused and unloved during the 32-year hiatus before Covenant moved in, Wanda, Ace is here to reassure you that it did occasionally experience the pitter-patter of little feet. The County used it as a stopgap while renovating other schools, and the YMCA was there for a time, as well.
How about that, Wanda? Ace certainly feels like the embodiment of a quality education after delivering so much good lerning. No, wait…
