Cherry Hill School
National Register Listing
Street Address:
210 Dillon Road, Hilton Head Island, SC (Beaufort County)
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817707071
Description and Narrative:
The Cherry Hill School, built ca. 1937, is significant as a building associated with the development of African-American education during segregation in South Carolina. The school operated until all African-American children attended the new consolidated elementary school in 1954. The community that organized, purchased the property, built, helped maintain, and attended the school was comprised of the descendants of the former-slave town of Mitchelville, the first community to mandate education in the South. At the time of construction of the Cherry Hill School, the island was still an isolated, largely undeveloped, unincorporated portion of Beaufort County. The Cherry Hill School is the first and only freestanding, purpose-built schoolhouse for African-American children on Hilton Head Island. When the Cherry Hill School was built, there were three other black elementary schools in privately owned buildings serving the various black neighborhoods on Hilton Head Island. However, none met in buildings specifically built as schools. The Cherry Hill School had the smallest enrollment of the black elementary schools on the island. The number of children enrolled specifically in the Cherry Hill School numbered from 27-32, with one teacher. The building is a simple, gable-front rectangular one-room frame and weatherboard-sided schoolhouse on an open brick-pier foundation. The interior remains much as it did when the building opened. While the building was a public elementary school from 1937 to 1954 it was owned by the Beaufort County School District. The St. James Baptist Church purchased the school in 1956. The church extended and renovated the building in 1984. Listed in the National Register November 21, 2012.
Period of Significance:
circa 1937 – 1954;circa 1937;1954
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Education;Ethnic Heritage: Black
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
November 21 2012
