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Educational Expansion (1.6.5)The early twentieth century brought widespread changes and advances in the educational opportunities afforded the city's children. In addition to the private Atlantic Collegiate Institute (the successor of the antebellum Elizabeth City Academy), a private high school, the Albemarle High School, existed briefly, between 1904 and 1907; the school was supposedly connected with the Methodist Church. A two-story building was erected at the corner of Harney and Dyer streets by 1905, and the lower floor remains--with roof added in 1930s--as the Seth Perry American Legion Hall at 215 North Dyer Street (Sanborn map 1908, 1914, 1923, 1931; Pasquotank Year Book 1955, 60-61; Butchko 1989, 164, 232-233; Deed Book 3; North Carolina Year Book 1905, 45i). With the establishment of a public high school for whites in 1907, both the Albemarle High School and the Atlantic Collegiate Institute closed. The first public high school (razed and replaced in 1940) was built on the site of the old Atlantic Collegiate Academy at what is now 307 North Road Street. A modern Elizabeth City High School (306 North Road Street) was built across the street in 1920. The last decade before World War II saw a considerable improvement in facilities for white children. A new primary school, later named for teacher and principal Hattie M. Harney, was built in 1933 on Parsonage Street (later Elizabeth Street) behind the 1907 high school; the Harney school burned in 1988. In 1940, the 1907 high school was demolished and the Works Progress Administration assisted in the construction on the site of a modern brick junior high school building, the S. L. Sheep School (307 North Road Street) (Pasquotank Year Book 1955, 60-61; Butchko 1989, 289-290). The educational facilites for blacks, while always lagging behind those for whites, made significant strides between 1900 and 1942. By the early 1910s the State Colored Normal School had outgrown its single building, at 708 Herrington Road. In 1912 the institution moved to a new modern campus on the old Poor House Road, now Parkview Drive, just south of the city limits; the campus was not taken into the city proper until the early 1930s. (Johnson 1980, 28-32; Butchko 1989, 275-277; Sanborn 1931; Miller 1936, 318). At the new campus, the school, which changed its name to Elizabeth City State Teachers College in 1936 and became Elizabeth City State University in 1969, occupied an increasingly large and modern campus. By 1942, the campus consisted of six brick buildings and a number of frame structures. Among these is the Practice School, a frame building erected in 1921 with the assistance of the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization endowed by Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company, for the improvement of educational facilities for blacks in the South (Hanchett 1988, 439). The Practice School enabled normal school students to gain classroom experience by instructing black children from the southern part of Elizabeth City. Though moved several hundred feet in 1957, the Practice School remains on the campus of Elizabeth City State University as testament to the school's original purpose of teacher training. Between 1923 and 1931 a larger joint practice school and public school was built across Southern Avenue (now Parkview Drive) from the Normal School. Later known as H. L. Trigg Elementary School, this building was demolished ca. 1986 (Johnson 1908, 32-34; Butchko 1989, 165, 275-277). |
On the north side of town, in the Sawyer Town neighborhood, two schools for blacks were built between 1900 and 1914, one in the 600 block of Harney Street and the other at what is now 502 York Street. Both schools operated until the 1920s, when they were superseded by the nearby brick Banks Street School. It was used until the 1970s and subsequently demolished (Deed Book 21, p. 378; Sanborn maps 1914, 1923, 1931). A public high school for blacks was not built until 1923, when Dunbar High School, later known as P. W. Moore High School, was built at 606 Roanoke Avenue; the building was demolished in 1988 and a new school built on the site in 1990 (Pasquotank Year Book 1955, 61; Butchko, 1989: 164). With the improvement of public schools for whites and blacks during the early twentieth century, private academies ceased. The private boys school operated by Isaac Tillett at 410 West Church Street was apparently the last of a long line of similar schools in the city; its operation ended in 1907 (Butchko 1989, 163, 220; Miller 1905, 451; Sanborn maps 1902, 1908). The only other non-public schools to operate in Elizabeth City during the early twentieth century, other than Roanoke Institute, were parochial schools begun in the late 1930s by St. Elizabeth Catholic Church (white) at 1100 West Main Street, and in the early 1940s by St. Catherine's Catholic Church (black) at 605 Shepard Street (Butchko 1989, 268, 306-307). Residents of Elizabeth City made a spirited campaign during the first decade of the twentieth century to secure another state-supported educational institute tor the city. In February 1905, John C. B. Ehringhaus, Pasquotank County's representative to the General Assembly and a future governor, introduced a bill in the assembly to create the East Carolina State Normal Institute for white teachers in Elizabeth City. Such an institution, which would complement the existing State Colored Normal School, was supported by a broad section of the town. Despite being passed unanimously by the House, the bill was killed in the Senate by the senator from Greensboro, which was the home of the state's only normal school for whites (now University of North Carolina-Greensboro). In 1907, after the General Assembly did pass a bill to create a white normal school in the east, Elizabeth City offered the state $62,500 and a 25-acre site if the school were located here. As generous as this offer was, it could not match that of Greenville, where the East Carolina Teachers Training School, now East Carolina University, was opened in 1908 (Bratton 1986, 80-81, 84, 88, 92, 97, 101). | ||
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