Former Segregated K-12 School Building in NC

Cleveland County Training School, Shelby North Carolina

Date added: November 23, 2024

Categories:
North Carolina
School

1935 and 1951 classroom buildings, south elevation (2015)

Do you have an update on the current status of this structure? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

Cleveland County Training School was built in 1927 for African American students. The site has a long association with African American education in Shelby, containing the only public school for the municipality's black youth from around 1895 until 1957, when the Shelby Board of Education constructed Hunter Elementary School on Pinkney Street. Cleveland County Training School, which offered academic and vocational courses to first through twelfth-grade students, became known as Cleveland Training School around 1949 and operated as such until the Shelby school system's 1967 integration. Cleveland School then housed sixth-grade pupils until 1977. Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church purchased the property in 1985.

Although the 1935 wing that had been added to the 1927 school's west end remains, Cleveland County Training School as it currently appears is the product of a statewide mid-twentieth-century campus improvement campaign. The expansive Modernist 1951 classroom and cafeteria building that replaced the 1927 school manifest the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's initiative to supply students with spacious, well-ventilated, and amply lit instructional areas and separate, sanitary food service facilities. The building allowed for greatly increased enrollment capacity and featured an auditorium that provided a much-needed venue to hold academic and civic events. The 1960 gymnasium made on-campus indoor athletic facilities and locker rooms available for the first time since the school's founding. The basement includes a sizable vocational classroom.

The Shelby architecture firm V. W. Breeze and Associates designed the 1951 classroom and cafeteria building and auditorium. Albeit austere, the red brick school displays Modernist tenets in its two-story-on-basement, flat-roofed form and central corridor plan lit by tall, rectangular, steel-frame windows. Canted brick walls support the flat-roofed canopy above the primary entrance on the east elevation. The bowstring-truss-roofed, red brick auditorium is also simply executed, but the roof form and the one-story, tripartite entrance pavilion that projects from its east elevation epitomize the streamlined modern aesthetic. Shelby architects Van Wageningen and Cothran prepared plans for the one-story-on-basement, flat-roofed, red brick, 1960 gymnasium. As with many Modernist buildings, the structural system is exposed on the interior. Steel trusses carry the roof load over the wide span above a regulation-sized basketball court and collapsible wood stadium seating.

African American children residing in Shelby benefited from the circa 1895 construction of a county-operated, two-room, weatherboarded school on the Hudson Street site that now contains Cleveland County Training School. Enrollment grew steadily. During the 1905-1906 academic term, Reverend R. Shipp and Mary O. Roberts instructed 136 registered students, 90 of whom attended regularly. Reverend John Wesley Roberts became the school's principal on May 31^st, 1906. He and county public school superintendent B.F. Falls led week-long summer training programs for the county's African American teachers.

Union County, South Carolina, native Adolphus Warren Foster, a graduate of Biddle University in Philadelphia, assumed oversight of Shelby's African American public graded school in 1916. As the building did not have an auditorium, Foster held 1917 commencement ceremonies in the Cleveland County courthouse. The following year, he led a campaign to raise $700 in order to secure a $700 matching grant from the Jeanes Fund with the goal of erecting a new school. Foster and other Cleveland County teachers provided instructional workshops at the Shelby school for the African American Teachers' Association. He became Wilson Street Presbyterian Church's pastor in 1915 and remained its leader until 1957. Foster's prominence as a community leader is further evidenced by his membership in myriad civic organizations and service on various committees. In 1919, Shelby mayor C. B. McBrayer appointed Foster to a commission created to promote racial harmony.

State appropriations for vocational education allowed Reverend Foster and his wife Maude, also a teacher, to add new carpentry, shoe-repair, gardening, house cleaning, laundry, cooking, and sewing classes to the Shelby school's curriculum in the fall of 1919. The preceding summer, the Fosters completed a training program at Hampton Institute. Maude had prior experience with industrial arts instruction as she taught similar courses at Scotia Seminary during her five-year tenure there. Other faculty members included primary department head Lula Lord and intermediate department head Cassie Claybrook. Foster continued to solicit funds for a new school subsidized by a Rosenwald bequest, the state education board, and the county board of education with a community contribution goal of $800.

Foster's efforts were successful. In June 1920, the Shelby School Board engaged Elliott Construction Company of Hickory to build a six-room frame school to accommodate the municipality's African American students, The contractors demolished the two-room school on the site and completed Cleveland County Training School just prior to classes beginning on September 13^th, 1920. The Board cf Education charged $3.00 monthly tuition for first through-seventh grade students and a $5.00 monthly fee for high school pupils. Reverend Foster taught seventh and eighth grades, Maude Foster facilitated the industrial arts classes, Mrs. D. L. Frazier instructed fifth and sixth-grade students, Bertha M. Darden educated third and fourth-grade pupils, and Pricilla Cabiness oversaw first graders. In October of that year, the Asheville Citizen reported that Cleveland County Training School was one of the state's eighteen county-operated African American public schools to offer vocational agriculture instruction. Shelby students traveled to Raleigh to participate in livestock judging and other contests. In October 1922, Foster and teachers Helen Eskridge, Anna Cox, and R. C. Cabiness reported enrollment of 138 youth.

A February 1926 fire significantly damaged the 1920 building. Contractors subsequently repaired and expanded the structure to create the two-story, fourteen-bay-wide, weatherboarded, hip-roofed, eight-classroom Cleveland County Training School #2, finished in 1927 at a cost of $30,000. The local African American community contributed $1,500, the Rosenwald Fund $900, and the county school system the remaining $27,600.

The 1927 building featured a library, an auditorium, and offices. A hip-roofed south-facing central portico supported by square posts sheltered two single-leaf entrances fronting Hudson Street. Principal T. K. Borders, who assumed the school's oversight during the 1926-1927 academic year, attained high school accreditation in 1928. The institution was then the county's only public African American high school. The Board of Education did not provide transportation for black students at that time, forcing many students to walk long distances to Shelby.

At the beginning of the 1930-1931 term, Monroe, North Carolina, native and Johnson C. Smith University alumnus Nobel L. Massey succeeded Borders as Cleveland County Training School's principal. His faculty then comprised eight female elementary school teachers, two female high school instructors, and one male high school teacher in addition to himself. High school students utilized four classrooms. Enrollment encompassed 117 high school and 427 elementary school pupils. Eighteen youth graduated that spring. The student body participated in extracurricular activities including a baseball team and drama, glee, literary, and science clubs. Registration increased slightly the following term, numbering 125 high school and 460 elementary school pupils.

Contractors erected a six-room brick addition at the 1927 building's west end in 1935. A photograph taken after the addition's completion illustrates that the 1927 structure had been brick veneered by that time. In May 1936, principal Earl C. Horton reported that ten female and two male teachers led the elementary school. Daily high school attendance averaged 194 youth taught by Horton and three female and two male instructors in six of the building's nineteen classrooms. After-school opportunities included football and basketball teams; debate, drama, glee, and science clubs; Boy Scouts; and the publication of a newspaper called Voices of Cleveland. Thirty-seven students graduated that spring.

By 1941, when principal Banaka D. Roberts reported that 109 of the 132 enrolled high school pupils regularly attended classes, high school faculty comprised three men in addition to himself and one woman. One male and twelve female teachers instructed the elementary grades. Roberts, the son of the school's former principal J. W. Roberts and educator Ida Roberts, graduated from Columbia University and taught at Dunbar High School in Lexington, North Carolina, before returning to Shelby in 1940. He left Cleveland County Training School in 1944 to become principal of Myers Street Elementary School in Charlotte.

Cleveland County Training School became known as Cleveland Training School around 1949. The State Board of Education allocated $141,365.88 for campus improvements in 1950, at which time enrollment numbered 104 high school and 477 elementary school students. The school system demolished the 1927 building in order to erect a wing containing classrooms, offices, an auditorium, a library, and a lunchroom in 1951. Cleveland County Schools' superintendent Walter Abernathy recruited James D. Hoskins, a Cleveland High School alumnus who attained a graduate degree from New York University and was briefly employed at Douglas High School in Lawndale, to serve as Cleveland Training School's principal. Hoskins and four teachers mentored high school students including twenty graduates in 1954-1955. During the following academic year, Hoskins and five faculty members oversaw 148 high school students. He reported that building updates comprised the installation of floor tile and the correction of water leaks in four classrooms completed in 1955. In 1959-1960, Hoskins and eight instructors educated 173 high school students and contractors erected a new gymnasium. Twenty-two teachers instructed approximately eight hundred first through twelfth-grade students at the time of the school system's 1967 integration, after which Cleveland School housed sixth-grade pupils until 1977.

Shelby City Schools conveyed the property to Jerry McGinnis on February 8^th, 1985. McGinnis deeded the school to David Wayne Allen, Kenneth Wayne Allen, and Jerry Lee Allen, trustees of Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church, on February 11^th, 1985. Temple Apostolic Faith Church transferred ownership to Christ Temple Apostolic Family Worship Center, Inc. on May 11^th, 2006. The church vacated the property in spring 2015 with the intention of selling it with protective covenants held by Preservation North Carolina.

African American Education in North Carolina

Limited educational prospects were available to North Carolina residents through the mid-nineteenth century. White youth with financial means received private instruction from tutors in private homes or attended subscription or boarding schools. Religious groups including the Moravians and the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, provided basic literacy lessons for free blacks and slaves, and according to oral tradition, continued even after the General Assembly enacted legislation forbidding the education of North Carolina's enslaved population in 1830. Although public schools enrolled white students in some urban and rural areas beginning in 1840, terms were short and facilities primitive. Private academies provided more comprehensive courses of study, but charged tuition that was cost-prohibitive for the average family. In rare instances, free black youth attended private North Carolina schools. Esteemed African American furniture maker Thomas Day's teenage daughter Mary Ann received instruction at the Salem Girls' School in 1847. She boarded in the Salem home of music teacher Christian Friedrich Sussdorf and his wife Louisa Cynthia Hagen.

Legislators attempted to improve and standardize scholastic conditions for white students statewide by creating a public school superintendent's office headed by attorney and author Calvin Henderson Wiley on January 1^st, 1853. Wiley oversaw the transformation of North Carolina's educational system, facilitating its rapid expansion to accommodate approximately 120,000 white pupils at more than 3,000 locations by 1860. State-subsidized school funding decreased and enrollment dropped during the Civil War.

Reconstruction policies included the promise of universal access to quality academic instruction. However, the North Carolina General Assembly, mandated by the state's 1868 constitution to provide free public education for all children, adopted in 1875 an amendment that allowed for the creation of "separate but equal" schools. As educational facilities relied on inequitably distributed local funding, this policy left black students with inferior buildings and supplies, shorter terms, and fewer instructors. Despite these challenges, African American leaders promoted education as a means of realizing individual potential and strengthening communities. The State Colored Education Convention, composed of 140 delegates from 40 counties, met in Raleigh in 1877 to plan systemic educational improvements. Politicians in Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Washington, and Winston soon sponsored initiatives to create the state's first black graded schools. African American students interested in becoming teachers undertook advanced studies at normal schools established by religious denominations and private entities in Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Salisbury.

In 1870, 1,036 white children and 74 African American youth enrolled in Cleveland County's public schools. However, most black children attended schools sponsored by African American churches and individuals. Compact School originated during this period. In 1872, African American farmer Peter Forney donated acreage to allow for its construction southwest of Kings Mountain, approximately fourteen miles southeast of Shelby. Forney then chaired the twelve-man committee that oversaw Compact School's establishment and operation. Local families agreed to a tuition rate of $2.50 per month for four-month terms, payable in cash or its equivalent value of wheat, 2 1/2 bushels. The money subsidized the building's completion and paid white educator Hill Culp a monthly salary of $25.00. Volunteers crafted benches and long tables to serve as desks. Thirty-five students including Peter and Clara Forney's daughter Lavinia enrolled in the inaugural term, which began in July 1872. Culp headed the school until 1877, when Lavinia assumed its oversight. She remained the only teacher through 1904, instructing fifty children in a twenty-by-thirty-foot frame building.

Cleveland County's African American children also had the opportunity to attend Lincoln Academy, a private boarding school located near Kings Mountain. The American Missionary Association (AMA) subsidized the institution's 1886 creation. Educator Emily C, Prudden, a Connecticut native known for establishing schools for white and African American students, orchestrated the project. Her other early North Carolina endeavors include Jones Seminary in All Healing Springs, Gaston County; Saluda Seminary in Polk County, and Skyland Institute in Blowing Rock, Watauga County. Principal Lillian S. Cathcart, originally from Florida, assumed Lincoln Academy's oversight in 1888 and solicited donations for a school's construction. The institution became coeducational in 1889, when Cathcart, assisted by four teachers, implemented a rigorous program of academic instruction. A March 31^st, 1891, entry in the administrator's journal mentioned that the school's reputation prompted six families to purchase nearby property to facilitate their children's attendance. The AMA's Daniel Hand Fund allowed for school and dormitory expansion in the 1890s. Enrollment numbered 219 students during the 1897-1898 academic term. Ongoing growth prompted the 1900 completion of Cathcart Memorial Hall, which had a three-hundred-student capacity. Lincoln Academy remained Cleveland County's largest African American school into the early twentieth century.

Although state subsidies for public education became available in 1897, legislators did not initially allocate funds to black schools. Local taxes thus supported school operations. African American children residing in Shelby attended a county-operated, two-room, weatherboarded school erected around 1895 on the Hudson Street site that would later contain Cleveland County Training School.

As the twentieth century commenced, Charles Brantley Aycock, North Carolina's governor from 1901 to 1905, advocated extensive improvements to the public school system. Municipal and county boards of education implemented more stringent teacher qualification standards, undertook building improvement and new construction, and consolidated smaller schools. Cleveland County assumed the operation of previously privately-funded African American schools such as Douglas Academy near Lawndale, founded in 1902 with the American Missionary Association's assistance. During the 1905-1906 academic term, Douglas Academy teachers Florence Mills and Nettie Smith instructed forty-five students on a consistent basis, although enrollment numbered seventy-three youth. Regular attendance at Shelby's African American school grew to 90 of 136 registered students taught by Reverend R. Shipp and Mary O. Roberts. Reverend John Wesley Roberts became the Shelby school's principal on May 31^st, 1906. He and county public school superintendent B. F. Falls led week-long summer training programs for the county's African American teachers.

Between 1910 and 1912, rural communities erected 132 African American and 574 white schools, many using plans distributed by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. In 1912, the state enumerated 2,226 rural and 105 urban black schools and 5,265 rural and 181 urban white schools. As inherent inequalities between black and white educational facilities prevailed, prominent educators including Nathan C. Newbold, James B. Dudley, and Charles H. Moore began addressing the appalling condition of African American schools. Newbold, appointed Agent for Rural Black Schools in 1913, served as the first Director of the Division of Negro Education upon its 1921 creation. With the aid of philanthropic concerns such as the Jeanes, Peabody, Rosenwald, and Slater Funds, he hired supervisors and teachers for rural schools and orchestrated building improvements.

Beginning around 1918, North Carolina's first public secondary schools for black youth, located in highly populated counties such as Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Wake, offered a few years of high school coursework. Earlier private schools including Palmer Memorial Institute in Guilford County, established in 1902 by African American educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Laurinburg Institute in Scotland County, created in 1904 by Emmanuel Monty and Tinny McDuffie, remained alternatives for black children from counties in which public secondary education was not available.

North Carolina strengthened compulsory school attendance legislation in 1919, resulting in escalated enrollment that could not be accommodated in existing facilities. Between 1921 and 1925, North Carolina expended approximately eighteen million dollars operating public elementary and high schools, summer programs, normal schools, and colleges for African American students. Public school teacher salaries totaled around ten million, new buildings and equipment five million, and higher education and teacher training allocations almost three million dollars.

Cleveland County's public educational system manifested statewide trends. Student population grew steadily through the twentieth century's first decades. In 1900, 5,269 white students enrolled in county schools, but only 3,893 regularly attended classes. African American enrollment totaled 1,029, with daily attendance averaging 580 youth. Cleveland County operated 22 African American schools and 85 white schools in 1902. Registration numbers increased slightly by 1910, with 5,889 white pupils and 1,110 black students on school rosters. In 1920, 6,896 white children and 1,539 African American youth enrolled at public schools.

Cleveland County's 1910s school consolidation program included merging three African American campuses-Caleb Peeler School, Cleveland Mills School, and Douglas Academy-at Douglas Academy's site near Lawndale. In 1923, when J. C. Newton became Cleveland County Schools' superintendent, the system employed 216 teachers in 71 white and 25 black institutions. Five white campuses encompassed brick educational buildings. By 1925, Cleveland County contained 80 white and 33 black school districts.

The Rosenwald Fund, an organization devoted to improving educational venues for Southern African American children, subsidized the completion of 813 buildings, including schools, teachers' residences, and industrial education shops, in North Carolina between 1915 and 1932, more than in any other state. Modest frame schools served most of Cleveland County's African American students through the twentieth century's first decades. In order to construct new buildings-most of which were one-story and weatherboarded-in the 1920s, school administrators solicited public donations as well as subsidies from the Rosenwald Fund. Rosenwald contributions facilitated the construction of twelve Cleveland County facilities: Cleveland County Training (four classrooms, 1920), Long Branch (three classrooms, 1923), Ebenezer (three classrooms, 1924), Philadelphia (three classrooms, 1924), Compact (three classrooms, 1925), Ellis Chapel (four classrooms, 1926), Kings Mountain (five classrooms, 1926), Cleveland County Training #2 (eight classrooms, 1927), Douglas (five classrooms, 1929), Green Bethel (three classrooms, 1929), Washington (three classrooms, 1929), and Borders (one classroom, 1930). After the 1920 Cleveland County Training School was partially destroyed by a February 1926 fire, the building was repaired and enlarged in 1927. Although portions of some campuses remain, all of the buildings subsidized by the Rosenwald Fund have been demolished.

Cleveland County school enrollment almost doubled by 1930, when 11,571 white students and 3,893 African American pupils registered to attend classes. Despite a dramatic improvement in educational facilities during the 1920s, many campuses remained primitive. Superintendent J. H. Grigg reported that 37 white and 23 African American schools had six or fewer classrooms in 1930, All were one-story and the vast majority were weatherboarded gabled-roofed buildings with privies. Only five white schools were brick, four had plumbing, and two featured landscaped grounds. Six white and five black schools included auditoriums. Ten white consolidated schools, Belwood, Casar, Fallston, Grover, Park Grace, Piedmont, Lattimore, Mooresboro, Waco, and #8 Township, were more substantial, with seven or more classrooms. Enrollment remained stable throughout the decade. In 1935, school administrators enumerated 9,003 white elementary school and 2,401 high school students and 4,202 African American elementary and 344 high school pupils.

The economic challenges that ensued from the Great Depression resulted in limited facility improvement funding during the early 1930s. However, the North Carolina Emergency Relief Administration (NCERA), the state's first New Deal program that created jobs for unemployed citizens, subsidized Cleveland County school projects from 1932 to 1935 including school, gymnasium, and athletic field construction and maintenance, heating system installation, and grounds improvements. The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) followed, engaging citizens in work endeavors ranging from public health and manufacturing initiatives to cultural activities. The program facilitated educational and athletic building construction as well as the operation of school lunch rooms through the early 1940s. During the summer of 1939, Cleveland County Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) collaborated with the WPA to plant school gardens in Kings Mountain, Shelby, and Polkville that yielded fruit and vegetables preserved by participants for use in the free lunches supplied by WPA- and PTA-sponsored lunch rooms.

As attendance escalated in the mid-1940s, the Board of Education planned to undertake school construction and maintenance that had been deferred due to building material shortages during and after World War II. A $1.5-million bond passed in 1946 promised to improve schools throughout the county, but high construction estimates delayed project implementation. In 1947-1948, Shelby school rosters contained 3,093 youth and Kings Mountain campuses served 1,801 pupils. Rural Cleveland County school enrollment encompassed 7,241 white students at 23 schools and 3,291 African American pupils at 25 campuses. Fifteen complexes included vocational buildings, while ten sites featured gymnasiums. Steel Quonset huts provided additional classroom space at five schools.

In 1955, Cleveland County administrators reorganized the school system, appointing a separate superintendent and board of education for Kings Mountain, Shelby, and rural districts. School consolidation continued, often involving converting existing high schools to elementary, middle, or junior high schools and erecting new high school campuses. The Shelby Board of Education constructed Hunter Elementary School on Pinkney Street in 1957 to accommodate some of the African American students who would have attended the overcrowded Cleveland Training School. In 1960, sixteen white and six African American Cleveland County schools housed elementary-grade students, while twelve white and five black campuses accommodated all twelve grades. That year, the county began implementing a campaign that resulted in the closure of rural schools such as Bethware, Compact, Grover, and Park Grace, all of which joined Davidson School and Central, East, West and North Kings Mountain schools in the Kings Mountain District. The County Board of Education orchestrated similar mergers system-wide. County-operated schools desegregated in 1965. The municipal process was more gradual. Shelby schools initiated integration in 1963, but erected Northside School for African American students in 1966. After the Board of Education achieved full desegregation during the 1967-1968 academic year, Hunter Elementary School ceased to operate. Cleveland Training School housed sixth-grade pupils until 1977. Northside School served first through fifth-grade students until 1972, after which the building housed a federally subsidized kindergarten for three years. In 1991, ten elementary, two middle, and two high schools served approximately eight thousand Cleveland County youth. On January 13^th, 2004, Cleveland County commissioners created the Cleveland County Consolidated School System, merging the Kings Mountain, Shelby, and rural districts.

Architect V. W. Breeze and Associates

Victor Winfred Breeze, born in Durham, North Carolina on August 18^th, 1889, earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from N. C. State College in 1914. He subsequently gained experience in the Durham offices of W. M. Pratt from 1914 until 1916, and G. C. White, where he spent the next two years. In 1918, Breeze garnered employment with Southern Engineering Company in Charlotte, remaining there until 1923. He served as an engineering consultant for a variety of North Carolina and South Carolina architects prior to establishing his own firm in 1927. Breeze practiced under his name, but also adapted the firm name several times to reflect collaborations with architects including Joseph Dill Rivers. Durham architect H. R. Weeks and Winston-Salem architect Willard C. Northup supported Breeze in his successful 1938 application for membership in the American Institute of Architects. His commissions by that time included the 1938 Shelby High School, the Shelby Nurses Home, and J. G. Anderson's Asheville residence. Breeze incorporated V. W. Breeze and Associates in 1948 and operated as such until July 1954, when he elevated firm members Lawrence Pegram Holland Jr. and Jack Paul Riviere to partnership and reconstituted the firm as Breeze, Holland, and Riviere, Inc. Breeze retired shortly before his death on April 11^th, 1961.

Shelby native Lawrence Pegram Holland Jr., born on July 17^th, 1914, graduated from Shelby High School in 1931, Mars Hill College in 1933, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1935. He returned to Shelby in February 1937 to work as a draftsman for V. W. Breeze and remained with the firm until July 1941, when he accepted a similar position in the New River, North Carolina, office of Durham architect George Watts Carr and Baltimore engineer John Edwin Greiner. Holland joined the Army Corps of Engineers in November 1942 and taught drafting, prepared plans, and supervised construction during his four-year tour of duty. In February 1946, he accepted a position with V. W. Breeze, but left in January 1947 to become a junior partner in Frederic Van Wageningen and Thomas White Cothran's Shelby firm. He attained membership in the American Institute of Architects in 1951. Holland partnered with V. W. Breeze and Jack Paul Riviere in 1954 to form Breeze, Holland, and Riviere, Inc. Following Breeze's retirement, Holland and Riviere incorporated under their surnames on January 23^rd, 1962. The practice name continued to evolve with successive ownership changes. Holland's son Roger, a North Carolina State University School of Design alumnus, joined the firm in 1979 and remains a partner at Holland and Hamrick Architects, P. A. Lawrence P. Holland died on February 15^th, 1986.

Shelby native Jack Paul Riviere, born on October 21^st, 1924, attended the University of Kentucky for a year after graduating from Shelby High School. He then served in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 until 1944. After postings in Italy, France, and Germany, he returned to Shelby and in January 1945 became a draftsman in V. W. Breeze's firm. In 1954, Riviere attained an architecture license, membership in the American Institute of Architects, and partnership in the firm Breeze, Holland, and Riviere, Inc. He died on December 14^th, 1969, at the height of his career.

Building Description

Cleveland County Training School is located approximately eight-tenths of a mile from Shelby, North Carolina's central courthouse square in a small, grid-plan, African American neighborhood. The building occupies the west side of a 3.45-acre lot bounded by Weathers Street to the north, Hudson Street to the south, and early- to mid-twentieth-century residential development to the east and west. Although the 1920 and 1927 schools that stood on the site had an east-west orientation and fronted Hudson Street, the 1951 building that replaced them has a north-south orientation. The primary entrance is at the southeast corner, facing the east parking lot.

The school encompasses four interconnected parts erected in 1935, 1951, and 1960. The two-story-on-basement, flat-roofed, red brick 1951 classroom and cafeteria building extends north to the one-story, bowstring-truss-roofed, red brick, 1951 auditorium, which projects east of the main block. The one-story-on-basement, flat-roofed, red brick, 1960 gymnasium abuts the auditorium's west wall. The school's oldest section is the two-story-on-basement, hip-roofed, red brick, 1935 classroom wing and stair tower at its southwest corner, which expanded the 1927 school to the west. The parcel's sloping grade allows each section's basement to have windows on the south and west elevations.

Planting beds around the school's foundation contain deciduous and evergreen shrubs. Grass fills the remainder of the areas between the building, concrete sidewalks that provide access to the entrances, and concrete curbs. Paved parking lots east and west of the school accommodated faculty vehicles and buses. The tax parcel's east half, which is at a higher elevation than the building and adjacent parking, served as an athletic field after the 1951 building's construction.

Prior to 1951, Lincolnton Street, originally named Lincoln Street, ran north-south just east of the 1927 school. The corridor's south end is now the east parking lot, while the 1951 auditorium occupies the north end. After 1951, Lincolnton Street north of Weathers Street and south of Hudson Street was renamed Kennedy Street.

Modest one-story dwellings flank Hudson and Weathers Streets. Similar residences stood east of Lincolnton Street on the site that became the athletic field. In the block south of Hudson Street, Eagle Roller Mill and Shelby Foundry and Machine Shop operated on the railroad's north side. Both industrial complexes have been demolished.

1935 Wing

In 1935, contractors erected a two-story-on-basement, hip-roofed, red brick, six-classroom wing at the no-longer-extant 1927 Rosenwald school's west end. The north and south running-bond walls each contain five bays of tall, double-hung, twelve-over-twelve, wood-sash windows. A continuous soldier-course lintel tops the basement windows and wraps around the stair tower. A firewall separates the 1935 addition from the 1951 building to the east, which replaced the 1927 school. A gable-on-hip-roofed, one-bay-wide and two-bay-deep stair tower projects from the west elevation.

Masons executed the stair tower in a distinctive brick bond composed of five courses of stretchers followed by a row of alternating headers and stretchers. The tower's south elevation contains a double-leaf door and transom surmounted by a tall rectangular window, all of which have been covered with plywood. Brick and concrete steps with steel-pipe railings lead to the entrance, which is elevated one-half-story above the basement. A round stuccoed panel bordered with a header course ornaments the front gable.

On the tower's west elevation, three double-hung, six-over-six, wood-sash windows, one at each level, light the stair well. The tower's north end is open. Round-arched window openings with one-course header lintels pierce the two upper floors at the north end. A two-course header lintel surmounts the wide round-arched door opening at the basement entrance, which is secured by a double-leaf steel-bar gate. The entrance vestibule provides access to single-leaf door into each classroom and the stairwell.

A small, one-story, flat-roofed, running-bond brick addition projects from the stair tower's northwest comer. The addition has a soldier-course lintel, a single-leaf door on its north elevation, and two small, double-hung, six-over-six, wood-sash windows on its west elevation. Concrete coping caps the roof parapet.

The 1935 wing contains two large classrooms on each of its three levels. The stair tower provides access to all floors and the 1951 building's east-west corridors lead to the classrooms on the two upper stories. The basement is also accessible through the 1951 building's basement classrooms.

The stair tower has four levels, as the south entrance is at a lower grade than the first floor. Wide door openings surmounted by six-pane wood-frame transoms light the stair well connecting the basement, first, and second stories. The flights of wood steps have painted risers and stained treads, square baluster railings, and molded handrails that terminate at square newel posts with flat caps. The steps turn at central landings with narrow hardwood floors. In the tower's enclosed south section, the brick walls have been painted and the plaster-on-metal-lath ceilings are in poor condition due to water damage. The tower's north half, which is open to the elements, has red brick walls, a concrete floor, and plaster ceilings.

On the wing's two upper floors, narrow hardwood floors, plaster-on-metal-lath walls, and simple wood baseboards and door and window surrounds characterize the classrooms. The ceilings, which were likely plaster, have been replaced with Celotex tiles attached directly to the joists. The basement has a plaster ceiling, painted brick walls, and vinyl-composition tile floors.

The classrooms feature steel doors in the firewall between the 1935 and 1951 buildings and matching wood doors on the west elevation. All comprise one large square base panel and a twelve-pane upper section. A narrower, shorter steel door secures the closet at the north first-story classroom's northeast corner. Above the exterior doors, three light operable transoms tilt open from the top, supplying light and ventilation. The wood-frame blackboards and coat racks with multiple hooks below a shelf are also original. Radiators associated with the steam heat system have been removed, along with the lighting that hung from the ceilings. Some original wood auditorium seats are stored in the first floor and basement classrooms. Roof leaks have caused significant water damage.

Classroom and Cafeteria Building, 1951

The two-story-on-basement, flat-roofed, red brick classroom and cafeteria building has a T-shaped footprint comprised of an eleven-bay-long north-south-oriented main block and a slightly taller seven-bay-long south wing. Masons executed the walls with four courses of stretchers followed by a row of alternating headers and stretchers. The wing's projecting east elevation, which is its primary facade, includes the school's main entrance at its center. Canted brick walls support the flat-roofed canopy above a wide opening secured by a double-leaf metal gate. Two fifteen-pane steel-frame windows, one on each floor, fill the bay north of the entrance. The south half of the east wall is blind as it encloses the stair tower at the wing's southeast corner.

The main entrance vestibule has a concrete floor. A double-leaf door with six lights above two panels provides access to the stair tower on the south. The matching door at the vestibule's west end is surmounted by a seven-pane transom and opens into the corridor leading to offices and classrooms. On the second story, the stair tower door leads to an open-air vestibule illuminated by a large rectangular window opening.

North of the wing, the main block's facade (east elevation) steps back several feet and extends north to the 1951 auditorium and 1960 gymnasium. The school system replaced the second-story windows in the three south bays, the windows in the central three bays, and the first-floor windows of the three bays to the north with pairs of smaller metal-frame windows. Most replacement windows have five horizontal panes, two of which open. Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church significantly reduced the size of the first-story window openings in the southernmost three bays and installed one-over-one sash windows that are paired in the two south bays. Brick fills the areas around the replacement windows. The slightly projecting second bay from the north end contains restrooms and storage rooms. To its north, the secondary entrance bay is in the same plane as the classrooms. A flat-roofed canopy shelters the double-leaf door with six-lights above two panels and a seven-pane transom. A twenty-four-pane steel-frame window with two operable sections lights the hall at the second-story level.

The 1960 gymnasium addition completely covers the classroom and cafeteria building's north elevation, but the west (rear) elevation remains completely exposed. Its fenestration reflects the interior plan. The first and second floors contain large classrooms illuminated by four groups of three multi-pane steel-frame windows. Narrow three-pane steel-frame windows light the restrooms. The sloping grade allows for a basement cafeteria and kitchen with only slightly shorter windows. Four single-leaf steel doors with eight-pane transoms facilitate basement access. At the west elevation's south end, a flat-roofed steel canopy supported by a round metal post shelters a double-leaf door with six lights above two panels and a seven-pane transom. An identical door, covered by the same canopy, pierces the north elevation of the 1951 building's south wing at the basement level. Above that entrance, two bays of rectangular multi-pane steel-frame windows illuminate storage rooms.

The south elevation, which fronts Hudson Street, projects approximately four feet south of the 1935 wing. Deep eaves shelter pairs of tall, twelve-pane, steel-frame windows with operable central sections. The square, six-pane, steel-frame window at the second story's east end serves a bathroom. Two rectangular, eight-pane, steel-frame windows light the one-bay-wide stair tower that occupies the wing's southeast corner.

The upper two floors encompass classrooms, offices, restrooms, storage rooms, and a second-story library, all flanking central corridors. The primary entrance vestibule provides access to the east end of the south wing's east-west corridor. A three-office administrative suite occupies the wing's east half south of the hall. A large classroom fills the space to the west. Two doors on the west section of the corridor's north wall lead to large storage rooms. The stair tower at the wing's southeast corner connects the upper two floors, but not the basement.

An expansive six-bay-wide classroom that functioned as a home economics laboratory spans the south wing's second story. The classroom features a full bathroom at its southeast corner. The two west rooms on the east-west corridor's north side served as an office and storage area.

Intersecting north-south corridors lead to the secondary entrance at the main block's northeast corner as well as the stair tower west of the entrance hall. Originally, six classrooms flanked each of the first and second-story north-south corridors. The first-floor classrooms, designed to accommodate younger children, have an east-west partition wall with two door openings that lead into a long, narrow coat closet with a restroom at one end and a storage closet at the other. Two rows of hooks and a shelf span the distance between the restroom and closet. Some restrooms retain original porcelain sinks and lavatories.

The interior is characterized by plastered concrete-block outer walls and painted concrete-masonry-unit and frame partition walls. Smooth plaster finishes the window openings. Most rooms have textured plaster ceilings, although roof leaks have caused some damage. Simple wood baseboards, door surrounds with butt corner joints, four-pane transoms above corridor doors, and wood-trimmed blackboards are intact in all but a few rooms. Some retain built-in bookshelves, long coat racks, and storage cabinets. Green and brown vinyl composition tile is laid in a checkerboard pattern throughout the building, likely over hardwood subfloors on the upper levels and a concrete basement floor.

Rectangular flush-mounted fluorescent lighting remains in most areas. The current owner installed later pendant lighting fixtures, ceiling fans, and commercial-grade carpeting in some rooms and began removing interior finishes in two first-story classrooms on the north-south corridor's east side.

The multi-stall restrooms accessed from the corridors have square terra-cotta floor tiles, painted steel partition walls, and white porcelain sinks and lavatories. A white porcelain water fountain niche remains near the north-south corridor's south end on each of the upper two floors. Steel staircases with round metal pole railings and square steel newel posts facilitate access between floors.

The cafeteria entrance is near the northwest stair tower. The kitchen, a large pantry, and cafeteria staff offices and restrooms fill the basement's south end. The finishes are the same as the upper floors, although the cafeteria has a wood chair rail.

Auditorium, 1951

The one-story, bowstring-truss-roofed, three-bay-long, red brick auditorium projects east from the main block's northeast corner. A one-story, flat-roofed entrance pavilion and slightly shorter flanking flat-roofed restrooms extend from the auditorium's east elevation. The one-story-on-basement, flat-roofed red brick gymnasium abuts the auditorium's west wall. A one-story, flat-roofed, one-bay-wide, brick gymnasium lobby and restroom addition extends north from the west end of the auditorium's north elevation. As the buildings almost fill the space between the main block and Weathers Street, the primary entrances are on the east and west elevations.

Masons laid the auditorium walls with four courses of stretchers followed by a row of alternating headers and stretchers. In the one-story entrance pavilion, two square posts support the wide opening that provides access to the entrance vestibule. Two double-leaf doors, each leaf with a large, square, glazed pane above two panels, serve the auditorium. The current owner replaced the original multi-pane transoms above each door with textured glass. Single-leaf doors secure the restrooms. Each has a multi-pane steel-frame window on its east elevation. Three bays of tall, rectangular, metal-frame, late-twentieth-century replacement windows pierce the auditorium's north and south elevations.

The current owner, Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church, modified the auditorium in the late twentieth century for use as a sanctuary, but the plan remains intact. The walls and ceilings are plaster. The commercial-grade carpet-covered floor slopes down to the stage, thus providing good vantage points throughout the room. Replacement steel-frame seating emulates the original configuration: a wide central section flanked by two aisles and two narrower outer sections. The church also replaced the original lighting with brass chandeliers and opaque glass pendants. Rectangular HVAC vent covers pierce the ceiling.

Rectangular panels embellish the stage's wide proscenium opening, which cants toward the stage. The stage projects slightly east of the opening and four carpeted steps wrap around its south end. The original curtain hardware is intact, although the curtains have been removed.

Gymnasium, 1960

The flat-roofed red brick gymnasium abuts the auditorium's west wall. The gymnasium is deeper and wider than the auditorium and is executed in five-to-one common bond. The north elevation is blind, but three partial-height window openings, currently enclosed with plywood, illuminated a large basement room. Two square louvered vents pierce the wall just below the cornice near the east and west ends.

At the gymnasium's northeast corner, the one-story lobby's flat roof extends to create a canopy supported by two round steel posts that shelters a double-leaf steel door with three square glazed panes in each leaf. North of the door, a small rectangular window enclosed with plywood served as the ticket booth. A wide, four-part, multi-pane steel-frame window fills most of the room's north wall.

Concrete steps with metal pipe railings lead to the entrance on the gymnasium's west elevation. A flat-roofed metal canopy supported by square steel posts shelters triple steel doors that open directly into the basketball court. A small, square, two-horizontal-pane, metal-frame window pierces the west brick wall that supports the landing. A single-leaf steel door on the landing's south foundation wall provides access to the basement. East of the landing, five pairs of metal-frame windows with five horizontal panes, two of which open, light two basement classrooms.

The gymnasium's south elevation is also blind with two vents just below the roof. A double-leaf steel door with a glazed upper section and a two-part transom is recessed at the basement's center. The classroom to the east has three pairs of metal-frame windows.

The gymnasium occupies the 1960 addition's entire main level. The building's structure is expressed on the interior. Steel trusses carry the roof load over the wide span above the regulation-sized basketball court. Insulated ceiling panels ameliorated the noise during athletic events. The gymnasium has hardwood floors and concrete block north, south, and west walls. The east elevation's north end is also concrete block, but the southern three-quarters of the wall, which is the auditorium's west elevation, is painted brick. Collapsible wood stadium seating lines the north and south walls.

The double-leaf steel door at the south elevation's east end leads into the entrance hall at the 1951 classroom building's north end. A matching door at the east elevation's north end opens into the gymnasium lobby, which contains two restrooms on its west elevation and a ticket booth at its northeast corner. The room has concrete-block walls, terrazzo floors, plaster ceilings, and metal-framed steel doors. The restrooms retain variegated mosaic tile floors (blue in the women's restroom and green in the men's restroom), steel partition walls, and white porcelain sinks and lavatories.

In the basement beneath the gymnasium, the halls have concrete-block walls, terrazzo floors, and insulated-panel ceilings. Metal-framed hollow-core wood doors open into two academic classrooms and an expansive vocational classroom with concrete-block interior walls, brick exterior walls, vinyl-composition-tile floors, and insulated-panel ceilings. Radiators line classroom walls under exterior windows. In the men's restroom, square pale-green-glazed-tile wainscoting sheathes the walls' lower sections and variegated green mosaic tile covers the floors. Steel partition walls and white porcelain sinks and lavatories are intact. The women's restroom is finished in the same manner except with blue tile.

The basement's east end contains large locker rooms, shower rooms, and restrooms. Pale-green-glazed-tile wainscoting sheathes the lower two-thirds of the shower and restroom walls and variegated green mosaic tiles covers the floors. A small locker room for visiting teams and a storage room are south of the large locker room. The mechanical room is on the short north-south hall's west side north of the stair tower.