The building was named after General Albert Gallatin Jenkins. He was a stern, rugged character. He lived at a period in our Country's history when men's passions were at a fever heat and those who aspired to leadership had to have these qualities. He was a son of Captian William Jenkins, a sea-faring man, who had acquired a fortune in operating ships from the James River in Virginia, to South America. He married Janet McNutt and the next year he purchased the Greenbottom Tract, containing some four thousand and four hundred acres of land and moved to Cabell County. it was not long after that, a son was born. Albert Gallatin Jenkins grew up in the area and after graduating Harvard in law, practiced his profession in Charleston for a brief time and then moved back to Greenbottom. When the Civil War began, Jenkins took the side of the Confederates and led his troops into battle. He was wounded in the battle of Gettysburg, again at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain, Virginia, and finally died at Dublin Depot, Virginia, on May 31, 1864. His remains now rest at Spring Hill Cemetery, Huntington, West Virginia.
The Albert Gallatin Jenkins Laboratory School
The new laboratory school is a two-story fireproof brick structure with large well-lighted basement rooms. The first floor of ten class rooms will be used for kindergarten and six elementary grades. The second floor of twelve class rooms including library and music room may be used for a six-year high school(grades 7-12. The annex across the street will be used for laboratories and physical education classses.
One of the basement rooms in the new building will be used as an arts and crafts shop where pupils may make things of wood, clay, metal, leather, and paper. This shop will be devoted to activities which grow out of pupils' classroom studies and will be essential as a factor of integrating pupil learning. All rooms and corridors of the new building have been treated accoustically. That makes for ease of speaking and hearing and eliminates completely the voice echo so often heard in buildings of this type.
THE NEW BUILDING - SPECIAL FEATURES
On the first floor is a beautiful kindergarten room with its own entrance from the street and with a specially constructed play court. Accessory rooms to the kindergarten include a material store room, a cloak room, and a toilet for children.
A health clinic or nurse's room is on the first floor adjacent to the office of the principal. Other rooms on this floor include five conference rooms, principal's offices, room for women teachers, nine elementary class rooms, toilets for boys and girls and generous spaces for storage of materials.
On the second floor is a music room or little theatre with small stage and storage rooms for musical instruments and provision for projection machine. The room will seat eighty pupils.
A beautiful library room is on the floor which will be the center around which many school activities revolve. Other rooms on the floor include five conference rooms, principal's offices, room for men teachers, ten class rooms, toilets for boys and girls.