Opened in 1950, the former Elbert Long School on East Brainerd Road has had a 70-plus-year history as a place of learning.
Most recently, it was home to the Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts, which moved this past year to a new facility near Highway 58. The school's new home is a $30 million, K-12 school on the campus of the former Lakeside Academy.
The historical photo accompanying this article was taken in 1963, about six years after Elbert Long School was folded into the Chattanooga City Schools due to annexation. (Prior to 1997, Chattanooga and Hamilton County operated separate school systems.)
The building first opened as a Hamilton County school named for Elbert S. Long, a one-time county school board member who was also president of the former Newton Chevrolet dealership here.
The first principal of the school, according to newspaper archives, was Malcolm M. DeFriese, a World War II veteran and graduate of the Middle Tennessee State Teachers College (now Middle Tennessee State University).
Long, who died in 1982, was remembered in a Chattanooga News-Free Press editorial as "a fine and faithful gentleman, a valued friend, an outstanding citizen and a major asset to our city." He was a member of the Chattanooga Optimist Club and the Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church and was the chairman of the East Brainerd water system.
In 1961, two years before this photo was made, Elbert Long School was one of the first schools in the city school system to undergo racial desegregation under a federal court order.
Elbert Long Elementary, as it came to be known, operated until 1989, when it was closed by the city school board. Two years later, it was reoccupied by the new CSLA. CSLA was opened in response to the success of Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, which opened on East Third Street in 1986.
ChattanoogaHistory.com
Launched by history enthusiast Sam Hall in 2014, ChattanoogaHistory.com is maintained to present historical images in the highest resolution available. If you have photo negatives, glass plate negatives or original nondigital prints taken in the Chattanooga area, contact Sam Hall for information on how they may qualify to be digitized and preserved at no charge.
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"Remember When, Chattanooga?" is published on Saturdays. Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.