This Vacant School Building in NC was Built for African-American Students

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Davidson Elementary School, a small well-preserved, one-story, six-classroom 1950s-era Modern Movement building on residual grounds of about four acres, occupies a singular place in the history of Kings Mountain. Designed by James Lorn Beam Jr., a Cherryville, North Carolina, architect in 1953, constructed in 1953-1954 by Frank Dewey McCall and Company of Drexel, North Carolina, and placed in service on 29^th November 1954.

Davidson Elementary School was the last built of three buildings known to have been constructed in the twentieth century for black public education in Kings Mountain and the only one of the three to survive. Following on the pioneering local efforts of black churches and their ministers to provide rudimentary schooling for black children in the community, a small one-story, weatherboarded frame building was erected as a black public school on West Ridge Street in about 1900-1910. It was replaced in 1925-1926 by a "five-teacher type" school supported by the Rosenwald Fund and erected on a two-acre lot in the southeast corner of North Watterson and West Parker streets. In the late 1940s, that building, named for its long-time principal, the Rev. Robert James Davidson, enlarged by classroom and toilet room additions, and known in its time as Davidson High School, was acknowledged as inadequate. After delays, this building was erected on a nearby site as an auxiliary facility for primary and elementary instruction with the high school grades remaining in the older building. As the processes of consolidation and desegregation advanced in the 1960s, the high school grades were merged in 1961 with those at Compact High School, a rural black school. Black primary and elementary students in Kings Mountain received instruction in this building and the older building from 1961-1962 through the 1966-1967 school year, by freedom of choice beginning with the 1965-1966 school year, and in this building alone for a single final school year, 1967-1968. With the demolition of the Rosenwald-era building in 1967, Davidson Elementary School became the only historically, exclusively black public school in Kings Mountain. Full desegregation came with the opening of the 1969-1970 school year, when all black students in Kings Mountain attended formerly all-white public schools. Davidson Elementary School housed special education classes in 1968-1969, served as administrative offices from 1969 to 1994, and last housed a Cleveland County alternative school.

Erected in 1953-1954, and following the State Board of Education instruction that it "should be modern and of first class type," Davidson Elementary School represents a significant local departure from the heretofore traditional school design, most often with Colonial Revival or classical styling. It stands as the first in a series of school buildings in Kings Mountain, in a modern movement mode, including North Elementary School and Kings Mountain High School, that has since characterized school construction in the city, region, and much of the state. Within Kings Mountain and being a new free-standing building distinct from contemporary additions to existing facilities, the black elementary school also represents the first important step made by the Kings Mountain Board of Education to address the pressing educational needs of the town in the post-World War II period, when response to population increases, obvious need, and inadequate funding was further complicated by the administrative challenges of a small school district grappling to provide state-mandated educational opportunities in a dual, segregated system. As the last built and only surviving black school building in the city of Kings Mountain, the Davidson Elementary School has come also to embody the strong cultural attachments of students and graduates of its older namesake that was pulled down in 1967, as well as those students whose primary and elementary education occurred in its classrooms. It is a landmark in the black community and a focus of increasing regard of the white citizenry of Kings Mountain.

James Lorn Beam Jr. (1918-2010), the designer of Davidson Elementary School, was a member of the regional architectural fraternity that provided designs for school buildings and related facilities in Kings Mountain in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Their number includes George Nicholson Rhodes (1902-1935), a Charlotte architect, who designed the present Central School building in 1932-1933, Charles Wearn Connelly (1905-1967), also Charlotte-based, who designed classroom additions to East Elementary School and Davidson High School in 1937, and Victor W. Breeze (1889-1961) of Shelby who designed "new toilet rooms at Davidson School" in the summer of 1945 and significant additions and improvements to West Elementary School in late 1951. In July 1953, Mr. Breeze was employed to prepare plans for "a cafeteria and modernize the toilet facilities at the West School" and Mr. Beam was engaged "to draw plans for construction of a cafeteria and modernization of toilets and lighting facilities at the East School." In November 1954, the Kings Mountain Board of Education employed Frederick W. Van Wageningen and Thomas W. Cothran to design North Elementary School, the city's third white freestanding elementary school. In fall 1961, the lucrative commission to design a new high school for Kings Mountain was sought by Mr. Beam, Mr. Breeze's firm in Shelby, and other architects in Shelby, Gastonia, Hickory, Asheboro, and Charlotte, however, Messrs. Van Wageningen and Cothran, practicing as Architects Associated, received the design contract.

The position and significance of Davidson Elementary School in the history of education in the City of Kings Mountain is inextricably linked to its role as one of three documented buildings erected in the twentieth century for the education of black students in the city and as the only one of the three buildings to survive. After the pioneering efforts in black education of the Rev. A. L. Martin, pastor of Bynum Chapel A. M. E. Zion Church, in the late nineteenth century, the cause was taken up by the Rev. George S. Leeper, pastor of Good Hope Presbyterian Church, around the turn of the twentieth century. He is associated with the Kings Mountain Colored Graded School, the first known publicly supported black school in the city, however, the nature of that association and his role as a black educator is yet to be fully understood. That turn-of-the-twentieth-century school, a one-story, cross-gable roof weatherboarded frame building erected on West Ridge Street, was typical of small school buildings erected in rural North Carolina in the early-twentieth century. Its plain, simple appearance was in sharp contrast to Central School, a large, imposing Classical Revival-style brick building with a two-story portico erected ca. 1910 for white students in the 100 block of East Ridge Street. East and West elementary schools were complementing white facilities and sent their students to the high school housed in Central School.

Black students of all grades attended classes in the small frame building for some twenty years, until the completion of the Rosenwald Fund-supported "five-teacher-type" school at the corner of North Watterson and Parker streets in 1925-1926. The circumstances of the loss of the Kings Mountain Colored Graded School are not now known. The new brick school, later named Davidson High School in honor of its long-time principal, Robert James Davidson, was an immediate symbol of pride in the local black community. Then and for some years afterward, the church buildings housing the local black A. M. E. Zion, Baptist, and Presbyterian congregations were modest frame buildings. Davidson High School, in turn, was the lone black school building in use in Kings Mountain for some twenty-eight years, until the occupation of the Davidson Elementary School on 29 November 1954 by black students in the primary and lower elementary grades.

The two black school buildings co-existed in Kings Mountain from 1954 into fall 1967. The consolidation of the high school grades of Davidson and Compact high schools at Compact High School in fall 1961, while ultimately beneficial to black high school students in Kings Mountain, was the initial step in the demise of the city's historic Rosenwald school. Its then inadequate and deteriorating condition probably owed in part to the possible destabilizing effects of excavations to provide basement rooms. For a short period, from fall 1961 through the 1966-1967 school year, students in the primary and elementary grades attended classes in both buildings. At the end of the spring 1967 school term, the older building was effectively abandoned and was pulled down by the end of 1967. For one school year, 1967-1968, Davidson Elementary School was the one, and last, building used exclusively for black education in the city of Kings Mountain. Schools within the city of Kings Mountain and the larger boundary of the school administrative district were fully desegregated with the opening of the 1968-1969 school year.

Building Description

Located at 500 West Parker Street, Davidson Elementary School stands in a small multi-block, historically black neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of Kings Mountain. The neighborhood is generally bounded by North Cansler Street, which is two blocks east of the school, by West King Street (Business US 74), which is two blocks south of Davidson Elementary school, and on the west by Davidson Park, which lies along North Sims Street and was developed as a black recreational facility with a swimming pool and athletic fields in 1954-1955. On the north the neighborhood is bounded in part by industrial facilities, north of Mitchell Street, and otherwise merges into mixed-race housing dating largely from the second half of the twentieth century.

The history of this area as a black neighborhood dates to the early-twentieth century, when a small, weatherboarded-frame black graded school was erected on West Ridge Street in the area of today's Cooke Circle, on the west side of North Cansler Street. At about the same time two of Kings Mountain's leading black congregations acquired lots in the same block. In 1903 trustees of the black Baptist church (now Mount Zion) purchased a lot on the north side of West King Street and built a church (at today's #316). In 1906, trustees of Good Hope Presbyterian Church acquired a lot fronting on North Cansler Street and soon built a frame church (at today's #105). In 1925, when a two-acre site was needed for a new black school whose construction would be supported by the Rosenwald Fund, a lot in the southeast corner of North Watterson and West Parker streets was acquired from its white owners, John Oates and Elvira Foust Plonk. Located about one-and-a-half-blocks northwest of the frame graded school, the lot became the site of a "five-teacher type" brick school that about 1934 was named Davidson School in honor of its principal, Rev. Robert James Davidson.

Through time black citizens of Kings Mountain acquired lots in this area, mostly from white landowners who held acreages for investment, and erected houses along its streets. Some of the most prepossessing of those that survive were built on North Cansler and North Watterson streets. On 27^th January 1930, Robert B. Byers (1885-1982) acquired an eight-acre tract in the northwest corner of North Watterson and West Parker streets from William Boyce Weir (1848-1934) and his wife. Here he built a frame Craftsman-style house at #303, diagonally northwest of the Rosenwald school, that remains the residence of his granddaughter. In 1953, when acreage was being assembled for the site of this new elementary school, the Kings Mountain School Administrative Unit first purchased two tracts comprising 5.25 acres on the north side of West Parker Street from Mr. and Mrs. Byers. This property, being about one-fourth of the acreage assembled in 1953-1954 for the school, comprised the partially-wooded rear, west portion of the eight-acre tract purchased by Mr. Byers in 1930. It would become the site of Davidson Elementary School.

In the sixty-plus years since the Davidson Elementary School was placed in service, the surrounding neighborhood has remained primarily black and generally residential in character with mostly one-story housing stock, including public housing on the south side of West Parker Street, dating from ca. 1930 through the twentieth century. In the early 1950s, after the Good Hope Presbyterian rebuilt their church at 105 North Cansler Street, the Bynum Chapel A. M. E. Zion congregation erected a new church at 213 North Cansler Street and moved from South Cherokee Street. The Rosenwald-era Davidson School was demolished in 1967, and the lot was sold in 1968 to the congregation of Mount Zion Baptist Church. Then worshiping in their church in the 300 block of West King Street (at today's #316), the congregation erected an imposing, west-facing brick church on the former school property. A meeting hall for black chapters of the Masonic Lodge and the Order of the Eastern Star stands on Childers Street, one block northeast of the church.

The generally rectangular, five-sided four-acre residual grounds of Davidson Elementary School, mostly comprised of grass-covered lawn and greenswards, are framed by the asphalt-paved path of West Parker Street on the south, native, mostly deciduous woodlands on the west and north sides in and along which the property lines are not visibly marked, and on the east by a low woven-wire fence, which defines the property line between the school and the Byers residence among others. The fence extends into the woodland in the northeast corner of the property. The school is situated in the front, east center of the lot and stands on a simply graded, elevated level in the otherwise natural topography that slopes gently to the south and west. The school faces south/southeast to West Parker Street (but it will be described herein as facing south). The front lawn is shaded by informally planted willow oak and pecan trees. The pecan trees were probably planted by Mr. Byers between 1930 and 1953 in what was then his back yard. Such plantings were a common practice by homeowners in Kings Mountain from the early-twentieth century through the interwar period. A majestic native white oak, one of the finest specimen trees in Kings Mountain, stands at the woodland edge, northeast of the school.

The willow oaks and the other principal access and landscape enhancements date to ca. 1954. A narrow U-shaped asphalt-paved driveway enters the grounds from West Parker Street, carries north along the east side of the school, continues as an arch around the rear of the building, and carries south to exit onto West Parker Street at a point that complements its pendant entrance. After passing between paired deep-rose colored Camellia Japonicas off the southeast corner of the school, the asphalt paving expands to cover a generally rectangular parking area on the east side of the school and does likewise on the downgrade west side of the building. A deteriorated metal, mobile unit stands at the east edge of the upper parking area.

On the school's west elevation, two poured concrete, partially inset stairways, rising to the east and incorporating flights of steps, landings, and short walkways, provide (the original) principal access to the school's south, front entrance and the sheltered secondary, rear entrance near the north end of the west elevation. They rise from the lower level parking area and driveway. A poured concrete walk, positioned parallel with the elevation and almost immediately beside it, provides access between the stairways. The southernmost stairway rises to a poured concrete terrace that extends to the east along the west half of the building's facade and its front entrance porch. The stairway is flanked by now-overgrown evergreen hedges along its rise. Similar, hedge-like evergreen plantings carry across the south front of the concrete terrace. A length of asphalt paving effectively extends the terrace across the recessed eastern part of the front elevation and continues to join the east driveway. This transition in materials is eased by other, apparently later plantings. An original poured concrete walk, antedating the asphalt terrace extension, carries from the front entrance porch eastward, parallel with the front elevation and in front of original foundation plantings, wraps the southeast corner of the building, and continues along the school's east elevation to the porches that shelter outside access to the east tier of classrooms. Later evergreen foundation plantings appear along the school's east elevation under the windows.

Designed in 1953 by James Lorn Beam Jr. (1918-2010) and constructed in 1953-1954 by Frank Dewey McCall and company, Davidson Elementary School is a small one-story, flat-roof brick masonry building of modest finish that contains six classrooms and related spaces aligned in tiers on the east and west sides of a center, north/south hall. The Modern Movement school enjoys a real presence and character resulting from Mr. Beam's skillful use of banked metal windows in a building defined by balanced symmetry and studied proportions. The school is rectangular in plan, about 66 feet wide and 129 feet deep, except for the offset on the south front elevation, where the center entrance and east tier of rooms is recessed nine feet behind (north of) the south elevation of the west tier of rooms. The red multi-tone brick elevations are laid in a one-to-five bond featuring five courses of stretcher brick between single courses laid in Flemish bond. They rise from grade, with no visible water table, to a flat, shallow two-part, metal-clad wood cornice whose composition and appearance incorporate galvanized metal gutters as design features. These simple cornices are flush against the walls on the south and north elevations. On the long east and west elevations they finish the shallow, projecting eaves that shade the upper panes of the windows. The stucco soffits taper diagonally upward from the wall to the outer edge of the eaves. The gutters are fitted with galvanized metal downspouts. The school has a flat asphalt roof.

The east and west planes of the two-part south, front elevation are blind and linked by a square-in-plan porch that shelters the center entrance. The porch has a poured concrete floor, raised a few inches above the terrace level, a single painted metal pipe support in its southeast corner, and a painted plaster ceiling. Painted double-leaf metal doors with lattice-glass vertical windows are set in a simply-finished metal surround that also enframes the single-pane glass transom. A horizontal metal sign, positioned near the east edge of the elevation and a half course below the wood cornice, has lettering identifying the building as "DAVIDSON SCHOOL."

A balanced symmetry characterizes the school's six-bay east elevation where multi-pane metal windows reflect the alignment of three classrooms in the school's east tier and the blind brick wall of a coal storage room in its northeast corner. The full-width windows of each classroom comprise two banks of horizontally-glazed panes aligned in three vertical tiers of six panes each with a narrow cast concrete upright between the two banks. The windows rest on low brick apron walls. From south to north these banks of classroom windows occupy the first, third, and fourth bays of the elevation with the blind wall of the coal storage-room comprising the sixth, northernmost bay. A small rectangular utility opening, positioned near the top of the blind bay and fitted with a top-hinged metal cover, provides access for unloading coal into the storage room. Shallow porches, sheltering outside entrances to the three classrooms, are symmetrically positioned in the second and fifth bays. In form and materials they repeat the finish of the south entrance porch and have poured concrete floors that are level with the concrete walk, paired painted round pipe supports, and painted plaster ceilings. Simply-finished metal surrounds like that of the main entrance, hold replacement metal doors with a vertical safety window below single-pane transoms.

A towering square-in-plan chimney stack, positioned slightly east of center, dominates the school's north, rear elevation and serves its furnace and heating system. Laid in the same one-to-five bond as the elevations, it rises against the wall and has a concrete coping. The asymmetrical five-bay elevation has a utilitarian appearance. A rectangular opening, with a concrete sill and containing a metal window with four horizontal panes, and a wide doorway sheltered by a porch are positioned to the east of the chimney stack. Respectively, they illuminate and provide access to the furnace room located west of and beside the corner storage room. The porch, similar in appearance to others on the building, has a raised concrete floor, paired, painted pipe supports and a painted plaster ceiling. A replacement commercial-grade wood door is fitted in the original metal framing. It opens onto an interior flight of six concrete steps that descend to the poured concrete floor of the rectangular furnace room. The room has painted concrete block and brick walls and a plaster ceiling. A commercial metal door in the room's east wall opens into the coal storage room that has a like finish. Neither room communicates with the interior of the school. Three smaller vertical openings, also fitted with three horizontal tiered panes, are positioned in the elevation to the west of the chimney stack. They illuminate, respectively, east to west, the staff lavatory, the boys' lavatory, and the girls' lavatory in the northwest corner of the interior.

The school's west elevation is dominated by multi-pane fenestration that illuminates and ventilates the three classrooms aligned in the building's west tier of classrooms. It carries without interruption, for about four-fifths of its length, from the south edge of the elevation northward to the one-story porch that shelters the building's secondary entrance. The short northernmost part of the elevation, being the west wall of the girls' lavatory, is blind. While the pattern of the fenestration generally repeats that on the school's east elevation, it features three subtle differences. These, in turn, reflect the slightly off-center interior plan in which the long sides of the rectangular classrooms in the west tier are aligned on a north/south axis while the long sides of the classrooms in the east tier have an east/west axis. The brick apron wall below the windows is taller than the wall on the east side, with the result that each vertical tier of horizontal panes comprises five panes instead of the six appearing on the east elevation. Also, the two-part bays per classroom have four tiers of panes on each side of the center, precast concrete upright instead of the three tiers on the east elevation. The porch is elevated a few inches above grade and the connecting concrete walk and walkway and otherwise reflects the form and materials seen on the building's other porches. The wide opening has a simple metal surround holding a double-leaf replacement door with vertical safety windows and single-pane glass transom.

The interior of Davidson Elementary School, comprising six classrooms and related spaces, a staff room and lavatory, a girls' lavatory, and a boys' lavatory, is arranged on a center-hall plan with tiers of three classrooms aligned on the east and west sides of the hall that carries on a north/south axis. Classrooms #1 through #3 are located in the east tier and classrooms #4 through #6 in the west tier. The hall is not positioned in the physical center of the building but off-center, to the west, by about seven feet. At its north end, at a point coterminous with the north wall of classroom #6 the hall continues in a ninety-degree turn to the west and carries to the secondary entrance on the west elevation. The staff room and lavatory and student lavatories are located on the north side of this ell extension. The furnace room and a coal storage room are positioned to the east, in the northeast corner of the building, and have only outside access through a sheltered door on the school's north, rear elevation.

The interior finish, like that of the exterior, reflects the linear, geometric character of the Modern Movement. In 2012, during asbestos abatement the original floor tiles, baseboards, the composition ceilings, some original wood-framed green boards and bulletin boards, and post-construction partitions and other features added during post-1968 usages were removed. As a result, the poured concrete floor is now visible as are the horizontal metal trusses that support the roof and held the ceiling. The original floor plan remains intact as do the painted concrete block walls that form its partitions and enclose classrooms, closets, and lavatories. Nearly all of the original doors remain in place as do the metal surrounds that enframe them. Doors opening from the hall into classrooms have paired, square-glazed openings centered in the upper half as do the three doors opening from classrooms #1-#3 into the two vestibules in the east tier. The classroom closet doors in the east tier have inset metal louvered vents near their bottom edges. Doors opening from the two vestibules into the toilet rooms in the east tier and those opening from the hall into the boys' and girls' lavatories are blind. The window openings retain the original metal windows, flanked by pier-like enframements of unpainted brick, and slate sills that carry above the unpainted brick apron walls. Green boards and bulletin boards remain in place, in whole or in part, in some classrooms, but those in other rooms were taken down, during the asbestos abatement. Ghost marks on classroom walls indicate their original locations and size. The boys' and girls' lavatories, the staff lavatory, and the four small individual toilet rooms in the east tier still retain the original tilework, fittings, and most of their fixtures installed in 1954.

The plan and arrangement of classrooms differs in the two tiers reflecting the use of the rooms in the east tier for primary-grade instruction and those in the west tier for the older elementary grades. Each of the three east-tier classrooms has a separate closet for children's coats, hats, and other outerwear, and a smaller closet inside each for teacher use. These are fitted with rods for hanging and shelving, most of which survive in place. In plan the closets for classrooms #1 and #2 are aligned between the two classrooms, together with small paired individual toilet rooms for boys and girls, which open from a vestibule at the east end of the alignment. The vestibule has doors opening in its west wall into the toilet rooms, doors in its south and north walls opening into the respective classrooms, and a door in the east wall opening to the outside under a porch. The vestibule has the same materials and finish as the classrooms and a porcelain-on-cast-iron sink mounted on the south wall in its southeast corner. The toilet rooms have brown multi-tone terrazzo tile floors, oatmeal-colored ceramic tile wainscoting with a self cap, original white ceramic toilets with black seats, and chrome fittings. These facilities provided valuable accommodation to the needs and instruction of the school's youngest students.

Classroom #3 was used for an undefined period for serving food that was prepared elsewhere, brought in, and heated when necessary. Ghost marks of service cabinetry, appliances, and counters are visible on the north and west walls. A fully intact wood-framed combination unit incorporating a wide green chalkboard and flanking bulletin boards below a transom-like bulletin board, survives on the south wall. Units like this appeared on one wall or two, with some variation, in each primary classroom. Doors in the north wall open into the closet and the vestibule serving this room alone. A sink is mounted on the south wall in the southeast corner of the vestibule. The toilet rooms retain their original tile floors and wainscoting, as before, however, the toilets have been removed. The south toilet room is now fitted with unpainted shelving: the north toilet room now houses a water heater.

The three classrooms (#4-#6) in the west tier have identical plans with teacher closets in their southeast corner and plumbing for counter-level sinks in the pendant southwest corners. The sinks and counters have all been removed, probably during the asbestos abatement, however the shallow, room-height concrete-block walls that formed their east sides remain in place. With the removal of the ceiling, a painted inscription, "Frank McCall, Kings Mountain, N.C.," is visible on the metal beam above the window in the west wall of classroom #4. All green and bulletin boards in classrooms #4 and #5 have been removed while one framed bulletin board and transom remains in place on the east wall of classroom #6. In the period after the school was used for black education, partition walls were erected on axis with the cast concrete uprights centered between the window banks in classrooms #4 and #6: new doorways were opened in the east walls of these new rooms to provide direct access from the center hall and fitted with hollow-core doors in rudimentary framing.

Near the north end of the center hall, just before the hall continues as an ell to the west, a blind wood door in its original metal surround, opens into a utility room. It has the same finish as the hall and classrooms and an intact plaster ceiling.

Four small rooms of unequal size and varying plan are aligned on the north side of the west, ell extension of the hall. They are, east to west, a staff room with adjoining lavatory, a boys' lavatory, the janitor's room, and a girls' lavatory. The finish of the staff room is like that of the hall and classrooms. The small lavatory, partitioned on its north side, retains its original terrazzo tile floor and oatmeal-colored wainscot but the sink and commode are removed. The window opening is covered with sheet plywood. The finish of the janitor's room repeats that seen earlier and includes its original plaster ceiling. The original porcelain-on-cast-iron utility sink remains in place in an alcove in the east wall. A metal drain is set in the poured concrete floor.

The boys' and girls' lavatories are the most intact, best-preserved spaces in Davidson Elementary School and retain their entire finish, fittings, and original fixtures. Both have a patterned, multi-tone brown and ochre ceramic tile floor and a six-foot-tall oatmeal-colored square-tile wainscoting with a self base and cap, and painted plaster upper walls and ceilings. In each case the hall doorway opens into a shallow (once tile-floored) vestibule, for privacy, that in turn has a door opening into the lavatory. The doors in these four doorways have been removed except for the one opening from the vestibule into the girls' lavatory. The boys' lavatory has two symmetrically mounted porcelain-on-cast-iron wall-hung sinks on its east wall and two floor-mounted ceramic urinals and a commode aligned on the west wall. "Royal Sloan USA" appears in the chrome metalwork of the urinals' flush mounts. The commode is similarly labeled "Royal Sloan Valve Co Chicago." The rudimentary wood privacy enclosure for the commode is not original. The girls' lavatory has two symmetrically mounted porcelain-on-cast-iron wall-hung sinks on its west wall and two commodes in rudimentary, early if not original, painted wood enclosures on its east wall. The commodes are labeled "Crown Sloan Valve Co" and "Royal Sloan Valve Co USA."

The precise history and use of this rectangular, one-level mobile unit remain to be confirmed, however, it was located here and placed in use during the last years the school building housed the Kings Mountain school district administrative offices. Surviving evidence indicates it housed counseling offices during the period (1995-2009) the 1954 building housed the Parker Street/Davidson Alternative School. The prefabricated building stands on stacks of unmortared concrete blocks at the east edge of the east parking lot. The exterior is clad in vertical metal sheathing and a low metal gable-end roof. A door at the south end of the west side is served by unpainted wood steps that rise to an open stoop. A second door in the north gable end opens onto another unpainted wood stoop and a deteriorated handicap ramp. Three small metal windows are asymmetrically positioned on the east, rear elevation. A heating/air conditioning unit is affixed to the south gable end. The interior is partitioned into three spaces of unequal size, finished with inexpensive, inferior materials, and now used for both storage and the office of the Davidson School Alumni Association.

Floor Plan (2014)

Davidson Elementary School (2014)

South (front) elevation (2014)

Fenestration, cornice treatment, and porches on the school's east elevation (2014)

North and west elevations, and grounds (2014)

Fenestration, cornice treatment, and walk on the school's west elevation (2014)

Southernmost flight of the paired stairways rising from the lower level parking area, here to the front entrance of the school (2014)

Entrance drive leading north from West Parker Street into the school grounds and the mobile unit (2014)

Looking south in the school's center hall to the double-leaf front entrance, with the door opening into classroom #1 on the left and doors opening into classroom #4 on right (2014)

Classroom #1 looking west/northwest to partition wall with center hall (2014)

Southernmost vestibule serving classrooms #1 and #2, looking west to doors opening into the girls' and boys' toilet rooms, with door opening into classroom #1 and corner, wall-mounted sink visible on left (2014)

Girls' toilet room in southernmost vestibule (2014)

Looking south/southwest in classroom #2, with door opening into vestibule on on left and door opening into closet on right (2014)

Classroom #2, looking east to full-width fenestration in east elevation (2014)

Looking southeast, showing fenestration and materials (concrete block, brick, slate, and glass), and south end of radiator in southeast corner of classroom #1 (2014)

Looking south/southeast in classroom #6 (2014)

Looking north into boys' lavatory from doorway opening from ell extension of the hall (2014)