Spring Bank School (Site)

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


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Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

The Spring Bank School was located on Quander Road near its intersection with Route 1. The school was constructed around 1890 and educated children who lived in the historic Black community of Spring Bank.

Viola Taylor: There could be 45 to 50 children in that building at one time. Sometimes, some years, you know, there was three or four children in each row. Sometimes there were four or five, especially as they got older. I remember the rows for the 5th, 6th, and 7th grade it always seemed like it was more children over there.

Joseph Williams: I remember that it had one teacher who taught all the classes. And every once in a while, Fairfax used to send a bushel of apples down there or a bushel of oranges once in a while you know for us. It had an old pot belly stove in there. I understand that the students before me used to go out there and pick up wood and stuff to put in the heater to keep the building warm. It was just one big room you know.

Joann Jordan: But we had to walk maybe a little over a mile every day to school. If it was ice, snow, we still had to walk down to Spring Bank. You had to bring your lunch every day. If you didn’t bring your lunch, there was a store up at the top of the hill. We’d call it Epp’s Store. And we would go up there during lunchtime at 12:00. And most of us had a quarter. And we’d buy five cents worth of bologna, and five cents worth of cheese, and a box of crackers. If we had a soda bottle, we would be able to get a soda. And we’d come back to the school and we ate our lunch.

Host: Spring Bank was the last one-room schoolhouse operated by Fairfax County Public Schools. After it closed in 1948, the students were bused to the Gum Springs School on Fordson Road. At that time, Gum Springs was a four-room building. It had been constructed in 1939 using a Rosenwald building layout with funding from the Federal government’s Public Works Administration.