Devastating Fire

Devastating Fire. . , In the early hours of Valentine's Day 1971, President Charles Bundridge woke up to a nightmare: the Alice Freeman Palmer (AFP) Building was on fire. Considered fireproof when first built, its wooden interiors and dated electric wring made the building vulnerable as it aged. Efforts to fight the fire were hampered by frozen pipes and poor water pressure due to cold temperatures. By the time the flames were extinguished\, the building was beyond repair. All that could be done was to topple the charred brick shell and declare the architectural jewel a total loss. The brick foundation walls in front of you are all that remain of the building., End of the School , Palmer Memorial Institute had been struggling financially for years before the fire. By the late 1960s, donors increasingly preferred to fund colleges and universities, not private boarding schools. Additionally, some donors took issue with the segregated nature of the school, and the Board of Trustees struggled to defend their decision not to integrate., The end of legal segregation also cut into enrollment as more would-be students had access to educational opportunities closer to home. These factors, combined with the loss of the AFP Building, led the Board of Trustees to make the difficult decision to close the Palmer Institute in October of 1971.