Staff writer
Up on College Hill in St. Albans sits a 5,200-square-foot home with 15-foot ceilings that holds a complicated past in its brick-overlaid bones.
Students once walked its halls and notes from a music conservatory once filled the air. Now it hosts a family.
Joe Delaney grew up in St. Albans and was familiar with the former Shelton College. He told himself, "I want to live there some day."
In March 2000, Joe and his wife Cindy made an offer and purchased the home for about $200,000. Since then, the building contractor and his family have made major improvements.
Accounts often contradict each other in Neil Richardson's book collection at the St. Albans Historical Society, muddling some details of the old school's history. Richardson serves as the society's president.
Construction began in 1871, after a religious organization, largely believed to be Baptists, decided a form of higher education was needed in the area of St. Albans, then called Coalsmouth.
The group had pledged the needed money for the building, and was excited for the promise it held.
A nationwide recession hit in the early 1870s, leaving St. Albans unspared.
In its aftermath, those who had pledged money for the building were unable to make good on their promises, leaving the planned college unfinished.
The school was originally to have two wings on either side of its main hall, forming a quad with a courtyard. However, with the pledges unfulfilled, there was only enough funding for one building.
The founders needed a substantial amount of money to complete the structure to their standards and were scrambling to realize their dream.
A successful farmer from neighboring Nitro, T. Matthew Shelton, gave them the money to finish the job. When the group was unable to pay him back, they named the institution in his honor as a form of repayment.
Once it opened, the school welcomed students of various education levels, skill sets and backgrounds.
The building is most commonly known as the "Shelton College" or the "St. Albans Latin School" but has taken on many names for the wide variety of instruction it offered. At various times it was called Coalsmouth High School, the Conservatory of Music for Women and the St. Albans Poultry Farm.
"I've never been able to find photos of the interior (of the building) from when it was the college," Joe Delaney said.
Finally, after years of serving the community's educational needs, the building was vacated.
From about 1906 to the early 1940s the building remained empty, growing dilapidated over the years. The history books don't detail exactly why the building remained vacant for so long, or why it was abandoned to begin with.
This period also has the historical society's Richardson stumped.
The building, then three stories tall, had been struck by lightning, severely damaging the third floor. After the Hamrick family bought the property in the 1940s, they had the third floor removed and transformed the former school into a residence.
In 1958, the Quillen family moved in, and it is now home to the Delaneys, who recently put it on the market.
The house is said to be haunted, Joe Delaney said, though he hasn't seen anything to back up it up. In October 2001, however, he told the Charleston Gazette that the house is haunted with the spirit of a "pink lady" and recounted other strange happenings around the house.
Regardless of the possibly spooky history, the home is unique.
Where the third floor of the home once stood is a flat-style roof, but a staircase and door to the this third story remain.
The Delaneys say that the previous owners of the home would spend a lot of time on the roof, which allowed them to watch St. Albans parades and fireworks, but they themselves don't use the space much.
Joe Delaney contemplated lopping some surrounding trees to enhance the view from the roof, but the possibility of noise from the town down the hill stopped him.
When the old school was built, St. Albans was not as populated as it is today. It was quieter then and it, like the house, is now rich with history.
Contact writer Megan Kennedy at 304-348-4886 or megan.kennedy@dailymailwv.com. Follow her at www.twitter.com/wvschools.