Old Bailey's School (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the school once stood. No visible remains exist.


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Here follows the school history as published by Fairfax County Public Schools on their website:

The history of Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences dates back to shortly after the founding of Fairfax County Public Schools in 1870. For the first 76 years of its history, the public school system in Fairfax County was segregated by race. School system records indicate that a one-room schoolhouse for white children at Bailey’s Crossroads existed by 1874, when Louisa A. Ball was employed as its teacher. The earliest records of a school for African-American children at Bailey’s Crossroads date to 1886 when Harriet J. Farrier was hired as its teacher. When the current Bailey’s Elementary School building on Knollwood Drive opened on September 2, 1952, only white children from the surrounding community were admitted.

For whom was the Bailey’s Crossroads community named?
Bailey’s Elementary School, which opened in 1952, and Bailey’s Upper Elementary School, which opened in 2014, are named for the Bailey’s Crossroads community. In 1837, Hachaliah Bailey, of Westchester County, New York, purchased 526 acres of land in Fairfax County near the intersection of Leesburg and Columbia Pikes. Bailey owned a traveling menagerie of elephants and was called “the father of the American circus” by P. T. Barnum. In 1843, Hachaliah Bailey conveyed his property to Mariah Bailey, the wife of his son Lewis. After acquiring the land, Lewis and Mariah Bailey took up farming. Their home, called Moray, once stood on what is today Durbin Place near Glen Forest Elementary School. The area around the Bailey farm eventually came to be known as Bailey’s Crossroads. During the American Civil War, in November 1861, Bailey’s Crossroads was the site of “The Grand Review” where approximately 70,000 soldiers marched in formation before President Abraham Lincoln. Because Virginia law required racial segregation in public education, after the founding of Fairfax County Public Schools in 1870, two schools were established in the Bailey’s Crossroads community - one for white children and one for African-American children. The school for white children was built on land donated by Mariah Bailey. At first a one-room structure, it was replaced in the 19-teens by a two-story building which operated until the opening of Bailey’s Elementary School in 1952. African-American children had no permanent schoolhouse until 1922, when a building was constructed on Lacy Boulevard. Local tradition tells that prior to this time the children attended school in structures where the congregation of Warner Baptist Church worshipped. The children attended the Bailey’s “Colored” School, as it was known in historic records, until 1956, when Lillian Carey Elementary School opened nearby on Summers Lane. Named for a former FCPS teacher and principal, Lillian Carey Elementary School closed in 1965, during the racial integration of the public school system. The first documented integration of African-American children into the formerly all-white Bailey’s Elementary School occurred in 1963. Today, Bailey’s Elementary School is one of the most culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse schools in Fairfax County.


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Here follows an excerpt from the George Mason University library website:

George Mason University: A History
1957-1964: The Little Red Schoolhouse

While the site selection controversy between the committee representing the Northern Virginia jurisdictions and the University of Virginia Board of Visitors played out during 1956 and 1957, and with classes at the new branch set to begin in the fall of 1957, President Darden announced the temporary leasing of an old elementary school building in Bailey's Crossroads at the intersection of Va. Route 7 and Columbia Pike (Va, Route 244). This building would house the newly created University College of the University of Virginia until a permanent location could be chosen and suitable facilities constructed. In early August of 1957, the Bailey's Crossroads location was occupied by University staff, and classes began on September 23 with an initial enrollment of seventeen. With John Norville Gibson Finley as its director (he oversaw both the Northern Virginia Center at Arlington and the University College at Bailey’s Crossroads from 1957 to 1960), Bailey’s served as the home of the college while the search for a permanent site continued, and for several years after until construction of the new campus was finished.

The Bailey's Crossroads Campus:
The former Bailey’s Elementary School located at 5836 Columbia Pike was a well-used eight-room elementary school constructed in 1922 of red brick. In 1955, a new, larger elementary school was constructed nearby, and “Old Bailey’s” was abandoned. The lower level had four classrooms - two were used as science labs, and the other two as lecture rooms. On the upper level, three rooms comprised the library. The last served as an additional lecture room. The library was staffed by librarians from the local public library, who moonlighted there after-hours. The administrative staff worked in a walled-off area at the entrance to the building. Overhead pipes in the basement leaked onto the floor and the stairs in the center hallway creaked as students went up and down during the day. Former occupants of Bailey’s have characterized the building’s climate control as “hot in the summer and cold in the winter.”

The building was small and probably did not come close to meeting the standards for a branch college. Because all spaces in the building were in use at all times, there was no place for the students to socialize before and after class. To help remedy this, the Bailey’s Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department next door kindly allowed students of the college to use the station’s upstairs break room as a lounge. Former Bailey’s student Richard Sparks suggests that because the physical plant of the college was so small, “there was no way for students not to get to know each other. There was nowhere to hide out,” and faculty would often catch those who attempted to skip class playing sports on the lawn. The small quarters did allow students and faculty to form close bonds, as they were nearly always together. This is evident in many of Sparks’ original photographs of the Bailey’s Crossroads campus, which now comprise the Richard M. Sparks Photograph Collection.

The idea to use the old elementary school building came from lawyer, and Fairfax Mayor, John C. Wood. Wood, who would later become the first Rector of the George Mason University Board of Visitors in 1972, was working as the attorney for the Fairfax County School Board in 1957. An early booster of higher education in Northern Virginia, Wood asked the Fairfax County School Board if they would be willing to lease the building to the University temporarily for their new branch college. The School Board offered the building on a yearly lease. The University was responsible for utilities and insurance. The total move-in and first year’s operations cost of the college was $40,000. This was financed through appropriations by Falls Church, Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County in July 1957.

The school also would receive several donations to help them develop a library onsite. President Darden personally made a substantial contribution to begin the library in August 1957. In 1959 a University alumnus and doctor living in the Northern Virginia area donated $1,000 worth of books to the college library, two more Arlington residents gave books valued at $100, and the Clarenford Woman’s Club donated $100 worth of back periodicals. These early examples of support would serve to build the library and offer a greater academic experience to the students at Bailey’s Crossroads. However, these gifts did not come without a price. Every time a donation of books was made to the school, library staff would have to work to find a place to store them. Director Finley wrote in 1959 that “[w]e can squeeze one bookcase more into the library-lounge on the second floor; put two on the stair landing and four in the hall on the second floor.” College staffers sought to store books in nearly every nook and cranny in the cramped schoolhouse.

Space for other collegiate pursuits was always at a premium. Bailey’s lacked a room that could house more than 30 persons comfortably. As a result, college functions such as assemblies, meetings, dances, and Final Day Exercises (since there were no terminal degree programs at the branch “Final Day Exercises” were the equivalent of graduation) were held at locations nearby, such as the Bailey’s Crossroads Fire Department, the Alexandria Episcopal Seminary, and local hotels and churches. Athletic events, which were never more than a pick-up or faculty vs. student game, took place either on the dirt field adjacent to the building which doubled as overflow parking or on the fields of local schools, such as Glen Forest Elementary School, which was located one-half mile to the north.

Bailey’s served as the primary location for the University College (which would later be renamed George Mason College in January 1960) from August 1957 until August 1964. Though conditions were challenging for the early pioneers at Bailey’s Crossroads, the students, staff, and the local population became fond of their school, and some were even sad to have to leave. The staying power of Bailey’s (or BXU as some students affectionately called it) is a testament to the commitment of the people of Northern Virginia toward higher education. Individuals from all backgrounds and parts of the area labored to make certain that Bailey’s would make a go of it until more permanent quarters were available. This was finally realized on August 27, 1964, when the last of the moving vans left Bailey’s with equipment and furniture bound for the brand-new permanent campus just south of Fairfax.

John Norville Gibson Finley:
Early in 1949 John Norville Gibson (J.N.G.) Finley met with University of Virginia President Colgate W. Darden, Jr. to discuss a project that the president had for him. “I want you to go up [to] northern Virginia and establish that community college,” Darden told him. [1] A twenty-year veteran in the field of education and faculty member of the University’s Extension Division, the fifty-year-old Finley accepted the assignment and began work in Arlington that fall. Indeed, Darden wanted him to start a community college branch of the University in the area, but it would prove to be no easy task for Finley. It took eight long years for the school, which would later be named George Mason College, to come into being. Finley labored tirelessly as the University’s point-man in Arlington until that day came.

Working directly under Dr. George B. Zehmer, the Director of the University of Virginia Extension Division, Finley first established the Northern Virginia University Center (NVUC) on the campus of Washington-Lee High School in Arlington on September 1, 1949. Finley had previously been up to Arlington and other locations in the Northern Virginia area on several occasions to discuss the University’s initiatives in the area with local citizens. Now it was time to set the process in motion. Initially, the NVUC provided primarily adult education. Its offerings were tailored to working people who needed specialized coursework related to their professions or for re-certifications. Later on, it offered formal college courses, though at the basic level. A resident of Charlottesville, Finley, who was Director of the NVUC, commuted up to Northern Virginia several times a week until he and his wife Cecile, also a faculty member at the University, rented an apartment at the Park Fairfax complex in Alexandria.

As director of the NVUC, Finley, along with prominent members of the community, conducted a public relations campaign to promote the work of the University in Northern Virginia. He participated in many newspaper, magazine, and radio interviews, to talk up the NVUC. He made presentations to clubs and civic organizations. As a result, the NVUC was astoundingly successful. Enrollment increased each year under his management. Most importantly, awareness regarding the need for, and the positive effect of, higher education in Northern Virginia steadily increased among its citizens.

Finley continued to work toward his aim to establish a college in Northern Virginia while directing the NVUC. He worked very closely with the Advisory Council of the Northern Virginia University Center, most times serving as its secretary and taking minutes at meetings. These meetings were always held after regular work hours and sometimes went very late into the night. It was no secret to Finley or anyone else at the University of Virginia that the Advisory Council spent more time discussing how to establish a new college than offering input on the operations of the NVUC. Finley strongly supported the Council’s actions, and he shared their desire to see a branch college created in the area.

After the General Assembly passed legislation in February of 1956 enabling the University to create a Northern Virginia branch, Professor Finley was asked to serve as its director. Finley gladly took on a second job as the head of the new branch college, running both institutions from the same office in Arlington. During the summer of 1957, he set up operations of the new branch college in the former Bailey’s Crossroads Elementary School. He brought in faculty from the NVUC to help staff the new college, and opened the University College of the University of Virginia in September 1957, with an enrollment of seventeen freshmen. He would continue to serve as director of both until 1960, when he became full-time head at the branch college, which, by this time, was called George Mason College.

Finley continued to serve as director of George Mason College until his retirement on December 30, 1963. Having helped establish and operate both the Northern Virginia University Center and George Mason College, John Norville Gibson Finley achieved the goal that President Darden had set long ago to provide a place of higher learning for Northern Virginians. Professor Finley passed away on November 28, 1971, at his home in Charlottesville. It is fitting that the first building constructed at Fairfax, the former North Building, was renamed for him in 1972.