ST. GEORGE — A 150-year-old stone wall that surrounded a St. George high school has started to be demolished despite a campaign to save it.
Construction crews took down a portion of the historic retaining wall around Curtis High School, on St. Mark's Place, last week as part of a construction project aimed at easing overcrowding at the school.
Residents and the local civic association had banded together in May to try and save it.
"The neighbors are all quite upset about it," said Theo Dorian, president of the St. George Civic Association who started a petition to save the wall.
"For a school that's supposed to be teaching a respect for history to set that kind of example, to disregard the history, it’s really a poor example they're sending."
The Department of Education plans to build a new 12,000-square-foot annex to Curtis High School that will add 345 more seats and move two classrooms out of trailers, the agency previously said.
The school is currently at 143-percent capacity.
Plans call to tear down a section of the 150-year-old wall and add a new entrance in its place. A spokeswoman for the DOE said that the removal of the wall was approved by the State Division for Historic Preservation but could not say how much of the wall would be torn down, only that it would be partially rebuilt.
The construction's expected to be finished for the start of the 2017-2018 school year, the spokeswoman said.
After proposals to remove the wall were revealed, the civic association started an online petition — which got 233 signatures — and posted signs around the neighborhood urging the city to save it, calling it ""the signature and pride of the neighborhood."
After a long City Council hearing in August where some members argued the School's Construction Authority could alter the plans to save the wall, the expansion was approved by the council 41 to 1.
