The City of Bay Minette has given away the final bricks salvaged from the demolished former Baldwin County High School, closing out a community effort to preserve pieces of the historic campus before the wrecking crews finished their work.
City officials also sold the last of four exterior doors recovered from the building, each priced at $75, according to a release from Tina Covington, the city’s community relations coordinator. Money raised through the door sales will go toward future school-related projects in Bay Minette.
Before demolition began, city crews carefully salvaged doors and windows from the old high school for reuse and resale. Workers also removed the marble sign that once stood at the school’s entryway and set aside a supply of bricks, which the city plans to use to build a courtyard and a new sign honoring the site’s history.
The City of Bay Minette covered the cost of tearing down several structures connected to the old campus, including the historic Ertzinger house, the home economics and agriculture building, and an aging classroom wing along East 5th Street. Crews demolished the Ertzinger house and the home economics and agriculture building in October, then began work on the classroom wing on Dec. 29.
The demolition marked the end of an era for a campus that had served generations of Baldwin County students before newer facilities replaced it. Community members had shown interest in preserving physical reminders of the school’s history, and the give-away of bricks and sale of salvaged doors gave residents a tangible way to hold onto a piece of that legacy even as the buildings themselves came down.
Local preservationists have also documented other pieces of the property’s past, including the loss of the Ertzinger home, a structure with its own long history tied to the site. City officials say the courtyard project using the salvaged bricks and marble signage is intended to serve as a lasting marker of the old high school’s place in Bay Minette’s history, even as the surrounding area continues to change to meet the needs of a growing county school system.