The Orange County Historic Preservation Commission is pleased to announce the listing of the Ridge Road School on the National Register of Historic Places. The two-room schoolhouse, built in 1932 to serve the Black children of the Ridge Road community, is significant as the best-preserved example of the once-numerous small schools built throughout Orange County for African Americans during the Jim Crow era of school segregation. The proposal to nominate the school was reviewed and approved by the North Carolina National Register Advisory Committee and was subsequently approved for listing by the Keeper of the National Register, an agency of the National Park Service.
“This historic schoolhouse was built, and later preserved, thanks to years of hard work, determination and perseverance on the part of the Black residents of the Ridge Road community. In the early 1930s, these hard-working farm families spoke out to demand a better education for their children,” according to Peter Sandbeck, the County’s Cultural Resources Coordinator, who added: “And after its closing in 1951, this valued community landmark has been protected from neglect and maintained for over 70 years by the efforts of the descendants of those men and women who had worked so hard to obtain a new school—some of whom attended classes in this very building.”
The National Register of Historic Places is the nation's official list of buildings, structures, objects, sites, and districts worthy of preservation for their significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, and culture. With this addition, there are now 47 individual properties on the National Register in the County, along with seven Historic Districts including those in Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. This project was sponsored by the Orange County Historic Preservation Commission and the Orange County Department of Environment, Agriculture, Parks and Recreation.
The listing of a property in the National Register places no obligation or restriction on a private owner using private resources to maintain or alter the property. Over the years, various federal and state incentives have been created to provide financial assistance for private preservation initiatives, including tax credits for the rehabilitation of National Register properties.
About the Ridge Road School:
The construction of the Ridge Road School marked a major achievement for the African American residents of this small rural community, following decades of struggle to attain educational equality. In 1932, the Orange County Board of Education agreed to replace a dilapidated one-room schoolhouse standing nearby and build this two-room building—with the condition that community members had to provide the necessary lumber. It was built on land owned by farmers Walter and Maggie Torian. The completed school housed as many as 60 students from grades 1-7, who shared its two small classrooms. Heat was provided by a wood stove in each room, tended by the older students. Drinking water came from a nearby well and two outhouses served as the only bathrooms, as was the case for the county’s other rural Black schools of that time.
Former students living today still recall their two highly qualified teachers with great affection. The principal, Alethea Burt (1902-1986), was a Hampton Institute graduate who taught grades five through seven. Ruth Stanfield Torian (1911-1989), an alumna of Winston-Salem Teachers College and New York University, taught grades one through four. The Ridge Road school was permanently closed in 1951, as part of the Board of Education’s initiative to consolidate the county’s rural Black schools by building large new brick buildings like Cedar Grove and Efland-Cheeks. Students and the teachers from Ridge Road were reassigned to the Central High School in Hillsborough, which provided instruction for all grades. Since 1951, the old schoolhouse has been used and maintained by the congregation of the Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church, located just to the north. Members of the congregation shared many stories about the school with consultant Heather Fearnbach, who prepared a detailed report documenting the history and significance of the school for submittal to the National Register program.
The Orange County Historic Preservation Commission plans to partner with the Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church to seek grant funding to restore the exterior and interior to allow the historic schoolhouse to once again serve the Ridge Road community.
Contact: Peter Sandbeck, Cultural Resources Coordinator
psandbeck@orangecountync.gov or 919-245-2517