For 75 years, the stone structures built by the Works Progress Administration in Chalkville sheltered girls labeled "incorrigible," "delinquent," or "wayward," although most arrived at the Alabama Training School for Girls because of behavioral and emotional problems and had committed no crimes, according to its superintendent in 1966.
The school, the result of a program initially developed by the Protestant Women of Birmingham in 1909, was designed to help troubled girls learn anger management and develop life skills in a family atmosphere. Over the decades, overcrowding and lack of funding led to a more institutional environment and allegations of abuse. The reform school program was undergoing its own reform in Alabama, and the girls were being moved to a new facility built by the Department of Youth Services, when the sprawling Chalkville campus was struck by an EF3 tornado in January 2012, leveling all but four of its 15 buildings. The dorm housing the remaining 18 girls sustained little damage and no one was injured.
Today, the abandoned buildings, including the historic administration building constructed by the Works Progress Administration in 1936, sit empty and derelict, a place where a new generation of wayward youths illegally scale locked gates to spray paint graffiti on walls and tell stories of those who once inhabited the "school for bad girls," as it was known to locals. (NOTE: Trespassing is illegal and the buildings were deemed structurally unsafe after the tornado.)
Only the graffiti gives testament to the presence of vandals here; any other damage has long since merged with the devastating effects of time and the 2012 tornado. Still, the ruins hint at the incongruous lives of the girls once housed here: An ordinary looking school and recreation yard are juxtaposed against so-called "dorm" rooms with locking metal doors and narrow bunks.
In another part of a dormitory building, a plaque says 'timeout room,' a phrase made much more ominous by the fact that it is attached to a heavy metal door with a tiny lookout window.
Above the door to the nearby Gothic chapel, the words from Psalm 119:105 are etched: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet." The door itself hangs open, allowing a triangle of light to fall on a scattering of Bibles and office supplies on the floor of the otherwise empty room. Shapes formed by a paler shade of carpet indicate where pews once stood. The pointed-arch windows are devoid of glass with the exception of a few brightly stained pieces in the large window above the door.
One other building survived the storm. Also made of stone, it was likely another residence hall, one of five. Paved roads leading to overgrown fields and floodlights pointing nowhere are evidence of other buildings, those destroyed in the tornado. Missing are the school, three dorms, a gym, recreational facilities and a cafeteria that were added over the decades.
At the edge of the property, a red roof stands out from the swampy surroundings. It belongs to an artesian well house likely built in the 1800s, when the land was known as the Matzuyama farm, according to David S. Rogers, deputy director for administration with the Alabama Department of Youth Services.
In more recent decades, the Training School site had room for 92 girls, ages 12 to 18, who "were committed to the Department of Youth Services and adjudicated as delinquent by the Juvenile Courts of Alabama," Rogers said. Those housed at the facility were offered a variety of services, including "group counseling, social skills training, assertiveness training, drug and alcohol education, value clarification, sex education, medical services, remediation of basic skills (math, reading, language arts), GED preparation, physical education, and campus service projects."
However, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the facility was overcrowded, young girls committed to the facility for behavioral problems would often have to spend days or weeks in county jails until space became available at the school, according to Kenneth Wooden, author of the 1966 book "Weeping in the Playtime of Others: America's Incarcerated Children." At that time, there were no group or foster homes specifically for troubled girls, he said, quoting Ann Rittenhouse, a social worker at the Training School.
According to Rittenhouse, 80 percent of the girls incarcerated at the Alabama Training School for Girls "committed no crimes but are in danger of becoming institutionalized, of deteriorating, and regressing." The facility was integrated in 1971.
Only two years after founding the school, the Protestant Women of Birmingham turned it over to the state in 1911. After moving to several locations in Birmingham, the Alabama Training School for Girls found a home in Chalkville in 1937, where it would remain for seven decades and undergo another name change, this time to Department of Youth Services, Chalkville Campus.
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