This historic school is in need of immediate stabilization but in reality will likely be lost. As you can see in the closeup below, the tile roof has already been replaced in one section and is collapsing further. The first school in the community was known as the Arlington Academy. Built in 1888, it was destroyed by a tornado on 22 March 1897. Its replacement was used until it was lost to fire in 1924. The Arlington High School was built in 1925 and used until consolidation in 1963. These buildings were used by lower grades until 1978, when they were finally abandoned.
The gymnasium (below) also survives, but is in poor condition, as well.
Update: Jessica McDaniel reports on Southwest Georgia in Photographs that the old school has been leveled, as of 2017.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 
following opening of new Calhoun County High School at Edison.continued as grades 1-8 until 1978 when Calhoun County School System consolidated its Elementaries to become new Calhoun County Elementary School was located on Morgan Road in Arlington. but Middle School is transferred into a new Calhoun County Middle School.now located in Edison. when Old Arlington School is torn down since 2016 to replaced by recreation division of The City of Arlington, when Calhoun County School System announces that two remaining schools (CCES -Arlington to the South & CCMHS- Edison to the North) into one new school will be called Calhoun County K-12 School will be located near Edison Sports Complex in Edison.around 2021.
I used to pass this school every time I drove from Albany to Blakely………I hope that someone will be interested in rescuing some of the interior. Perhaps the floors and some doors….even lockers. It is a shame to let all just rot. Maybe by seeling off parts they could save a small portion of the building and use it.
Too late!!! It sat for years in a state of decay. It had asbestos and that was one reason there was a delay in getting it demolished. In the latter years, it actually began to fall in on itself. I think the city received a grant to subsidize the cost of the project. Finally, it was leveled in 2017 back to bare dirt. I graduated there in 1958 and it is a sad memory.
My grandmother, Willie Mae Taliaferro, lived in and near Arlington her entire life, and I visited her often in the 60s and 70s. She would drive me and my sister to Thornton’s store most every day. In 1969, I even attended school at the Arlington School for 6 weeks, and one of my teachers there had taught my father in the 1940s. Before I graduated high school in Alabama in 1976, I knew Arlington to be a thriving and busy little town with numerous small businesses. It is heartbreaking to day to see what has become of the town.
I have lost my Mathis family who lived in Arlington, Ga. And each search has hit against a brick wall. It is as if they never existed. James (Jim)Mathis lived in Arlington, until he died approximately in 1975 & attended Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. He had relatives who once lived in Fort Gaines, Ga. Mathis decendents, where are you?
I went to kindergarten, first and second grades there. I remember the “big” scary slide and merry-go-round in the playground area; also…beautiful hard wood floors in the halls and classrooms.
my step dads father was the principal here,lee powell
I was in the 3rd grade here, and also took piano lessons in a small room behind the stage in the auditorium. My piano teacher was Ms. Lellie Turner.
I also was in a ‘talent contest’ with my cousin Marie (still living in Arlington) and friend Gloria Jean, twirling a baton to “Wake Up Little Suzie”…Funny when I think about it now.