Among nine places recently listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register is one by an architect mentored by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the largest historically Black cemeteries in Virginia outside of Richmond and a rare surviving two-room schoolhouse more than a century old that served Black students in Louisa County.
The board of the commonwealth’s Department of Historic Resources approved these properties for designation on the Virginia Landmarks Register during its quarterly public meeting on June 12 in Farmville.
In Louisa, Cuckoo Elementary School, built circa 1925, is a rare surviving two-room schoolhouse that served rural Black students in grades one through seven during the era of racial segregation in Virginia’s public schools until it closed in 1955 due to a fire.
The school represents the small schoolhouses that were common throughout rural Virginia from the 1870s into the mid-20th century. Cuckoo Elementary School was designated a landmark under the African American Schools in Virginia: A Multiple Property Document.
In the city of Charlottesville, the Thomas and Alena Hammond House was designed in 1962 by Herbert Fritz, Jr., an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, the acclaimed 20th-century architect known for his designs inspired by the natural world. Constructed of wood, fieldstone and glass, the one-story house embodies the distinctive characteristics of Wrightian architecture with its open floor plan, central hearth, cantilevered roof and organic materials and forms that blur the line between interior and exterior space.
Finally, Fairview Cemetery, established in 1868 in the city of Staunton by two local Black churches, stands as one of the largest historically Black cemeteries in Virginia outside of Richmond.
One of only two documented Black cemeteries within the city, Fairview includes more than 2,200 documented interments and an estimated 1,000 additional unmarked graves. Marked burials portray the gamut of Black lifestyles possible in the South after the Civil War, including freedmen and the formerly enslaved.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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