School

Lowes Grove School

Innovative school provided a center for once-rural community. Now almost entirely demolished.

W.G. Pearson Elementary / Middle School

WG Pearson School, 1950s. (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) Designed by George Watts Carr, Sr. the WG Pearson Elementary School was built in 1928. It is one of the most impressive of the 1920s-1930s era school buildings, both in terms of the building architecture and the relation of the building to the site and the surrounding neighborhood, as...

National Religious Training School And Chatauqua / North Carolina Central University

Through the perseverance of James Shepard, a small religious training school becomes a state university

Old Morehead School

Morehead School, 1924 (from the Durham High School Messenger, via Milo Pyne) The Morehead School, 1924. (Digital Durham) Public schools were established in Durham in 1882 using leased space in the Wright Factory building on Main St. The Durham Graded School, on Jackson St. between Carr and Warren Sts., was Durham's first dedicated public school...

East End Graded School

----- Original East End School, ~1910s (Courtesy Durham Public Schools) The East End Graded School, built in 1909, was the third graded school established for African-American children in Durham, after the Whitted School (at Ramsey and Proctor Streets in Hayti) and the West End Graded School. The locations of these schools reflected the locations...

Whitted School - Ramsey Street (1893-1921)

The first graded school for African-American children was built on Ramsey St. in 1893. Named the Whitted School after the first school principal, the school had operated out of temporary venues prior to construction of its new building, first using the Primitive Baptist Church and then a prize house on Red Cross St (now under the footprint of the...

West End Graded School

The West End Graded School was one of the first three public graded schools for African-American children in Durham's segregated school system. The first school for African-American children was the Whitted School, which located in a Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. prize house on Red Cross Street (essentially where the DBAP is now) and the Primitive Baptist Church before a permanent structure was erected on Ramsey and Proctor Sts., in Hayti.

Southside School

Southside School, undated (William Franklin Warren Collection, Durham County LIbrary) Southside School was built in 1921, replacing an earlier "West Durham School" that had been located at Swift Ave. and Thaxton Sts. Plan of Southside School (Courtesy Old West Durham) I don't have much information about what the school was like, students'...

Lyon Park School

Lyon Park School, likely 1930s (William Franklin Warren Collection, Durham County Library) Lyon Park School, 1950s (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) 04.03.11 (G. Kueber)

Fuller School (1897-1937)

While I've previously profiled the first 'Graded School' constructed in Durham (i.e. public school,) private schools began in fits and starts - a log cabin school near the present intersection of Dillard and Main, classes in churches, etc. The first private school of substance in Durham began in 1852, on land donated by AJ Rigsbee at the current...