Mary H. Wright Elementary School
National Register Listing
Street Address:
201 Caulder Avenue, Spartanburg, SC (Spartanburg County)
Alternate Name:
Southside Learning Center
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817742060
Description and Narrative:
The Mary H. Wright Elementary School is significant for its association with the statewide struggle over racial equality in education during the 1950s and as a remarkable local example of how one community attempted to implement the state legislature’s initial response to the legal challenges brought against South Carolina’s segregated educational system. The school, constructed in 1951, was one of the first buildings constructed in the state with funds from the statewide sales tax used to finance the state’s equalization program of Governor James F. Byrnes and was cited in litigation from the period for its importance in relationship to this program. The school is also significant as an excellent example of International style institutional architecture in upstate South Carolina and as an important design work of W. Manchester Hudson and A. Hugh Chapman, Jr., prominent local architects of the mid-twentieth century. The school was named for a local Southside resident and black educator. After completion of the main, two-story, L-shaped brick block of the Wright School in 1951, two additional brick wings, built to resemble the original section, were added in the ensuing years. The first, added to the south end of the original building by Hudson and Chapman in 1954, created additional classroom space on a single rectangular story and was funded through revenues generated by the Byrnes Tax. The second wing was added to the east end of the original building by Hudson and Chapman in 1960, after the Byrnes Tax had been scrapped, but the revenue first generated in 1951 continued to be used for capital projects for more than fifteen years after the program was dissolved, so it is quite likely that this wing was funded with Byrnes money as well. Both additions appear to have been part of the original plan for the school. A fourth, non-contributing section consisting of a gymnasium and classroom was added in 1980. Listed in the National Register August 3, 2007.
Period of Significance:
1951;1954
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Education;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
August 3 2007
