Hall building and Kable residence were spared. Fortunately, no students were seriously injured, many of them awoken by Captain Kable himself. The town of Staunton responded to the tragedy admirably. Cadets were offered temporary housing, and the YMCA provided accommodations for classes. Meanwhile, the Kables went right to work rebuilding the school. Expansion period In March 1905, construction began on a combination barracks and classroom facility. Within six months the building was completed, in time for the start of the 1905 school year that September. Eventually named South Barracks, the three-story brick fortress-like structure stood on the top of the hill at the southern edge of the academy grounds overlooking Mary Baldwin College. The arched entranceway at the north end led to an open quadrangle surrounded by cadet rooms, classrooms, and study hall on the first floor and open galleries with cadet rooms and suspended walkways on the two upper floors. In all, the barracks accommodated over 100 cadet rooms, 3 laboratories, and 19 classrooms, including a large instruction hall on the second floor. The academy flourished under the younger Kable over the next 15 years. Captain Kable died in 1912, at which point his son became President. That same year, the academy's plaza, which was used several times each day for cadet formations, was covered with asphalt, giving the assembly area the name it would be known by for the next six decades, "The Asphalt." In 1913, a new 500-seat Mess Hall was completed, and a building known as the Natatorium was erected to house a new swimming pool. In 1917, while the U.S. was becoming involved in World War I on the side of the Allies, SMA joined the Army's Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program, an affiliation that would last for nearly a half-century. The next year, a Junior School was added for 6th through 8th grades with the only wooden barracks to be built since the disastrous fire of 1904. Finally, North Barracks was constructed in 1919. With six stories and a smokestack at the rear rising another three stories above the roof, the building was the tallest ever built in Staunton. Four three-story columns graced its entrance, topped by a triangular gable with a large clock overlooking The Asphalt. The bottom floor, which was two stories tall, housed a gymnasium that could be used as a 1,600-seat assembly hall. The second floor included a