Port Royal School
National Register Listing
Street Address:
1214 Paris Ave., Port Royal, SC (Beaufort County)
Alternate Name:
Port Royal Elementary School
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817707072
Description and Narrative:
The Port Royal School, constructed in 1911, is architecturally significant for its
association with Wilson and Sompayrac, which was one of the most significant architectural firms operating in South Carolina at the time of the Port Royal School’s construction and today
widely considered to be architectural masters of the early twentieth century. In addition, both the
1911 and the 1954 buildings at the Port Royal School are significant in education for their direct association with Port Royal’s uniquely complicated history of racial segregation in the years following the collapse of the Port Royal Experiment during the American Civil War. During the period from 1911 to 1954, the Port Royal School managed to reflect the period’s conflicting approaches to school segregation and separate-but-equal funding of education in the state of South Carolina, including as a recipient of Federal Impact Aid construction funds in the early 1950s and as a fixture of white advantage even when Equalization funds were finally expended on behalf of Port Royal’s black students in 1954. The Port Royal School is a two-story, Colonial Revival, solid concrete block, gable-on-hipped roof building with prominent exterior chimneys and a four-sided replica cupola. In 1954, school authorities expanded the building to the north with the construction of a one-story, brick, Modern-style addition designed by William Harleston, an associate with the Charleston architecture firm of Halsey and Cummings. Originally built for white students, it remained segregated until 1965 when Beaufort County schools enrolled black students. Listed in the National Register April 21, 2014.
Period of Significance:
1911 – 1954
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Education;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
April 21 2014
