Alabama Vocational School for Girls
The Alabama Vocational School for Girls was a residential school for dependent and delinquent girls established by the directors of the Mercy Home as a complement to the state-run Alabama Boys Industrial School at Roebuck.
Mercy Home founder and president Mrs C. B. Spencer first publicized the proposal to build such a facility in an address on November 5, 1908, subsequently published in the local newspapers. At the time the group had raised approximately $7,000 of the $50,000 it projected would be needed to construct, equip and staff such an institution.
Eventually the board acquired a 5-acre parcel at Cedar Station on the Gate City streetcar line (now on Messer Airport Highway), which also was used as a new site for the Mercy Home Orphanage which was relocated from downtown Birmingham in 1927. The girls at the vocational school assisted in the evacuation and temporary housing of children left homeless when the main building at the orphanage burned down on Christmas night in 1935.
The site and continued to operate as Gateway's "Susanna Campus", focusing on housing and treatment programs for youth age 12–18 with severe emotional and behavioral issues. In 2023 Gateway successfully petitioned the Birmingham City Council to rezone the former Mercy Home property as a commercial district so that they could sell it to Ambipar as a corporate office.
References
- "Planning To Build Large Industrial Home for Girls." (November 8, 1908) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 5
- "Tots Safe In Mercy Home Fire." (December 26, 1935) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 1
- "The Near-Tragedy At The Mercy Home" (December 26, 1935) The Birmingham News, p. 6
- Garrison, Greg (March 3, 2023) "City approves Gateway plan to sell Birmingham’s first orphanage campus near airport." The Birmingham News