March 12, 2009 Issue
Crossnore School Historic District Entered in National Register of Historic Places
DAR Dormitory/Mary L. Jackson Cooper Building
The Crossnore School recently received notification from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources State Historic Preservation Office that the United States Department of the Interior entered the Crossnore School Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places on February 18.
In the letter dated March 3, 2009, Jeffrey J. Crow, State Historic Preservation Officer, writes, “The National Register has been called ‘a roll call of the tangible reminders of the history of the United States.’ It is, therefore, a pleasure for the Office of Archives and History to participate in this program and thereby make our nation aware of North Carolina’s rich cultural heritage.”
The Bell Tower
Crossnore School’s Historic District is comprised of five historic buildings and one historic structure. The historic properties include the following:
--The DAR Dormitory/Mary L. Jackson Cooper Building was constructed in 1933 as a dormitory for the “big girls;” a Craftsman-style building with Linville river-rock veneer foundation and entrance porch. It is the oldest surviving building on campus.
--The Bell Tower was constructed in 1951: Linville river-rock veneer added in 1960.
--Homespun House/Weaving Room, 1936, Linville river-rock exterior gathered by hand by Crossnore students. This building was placed on the National Registry in 2001.
Homespun House/Weaving Room
--E.H. Sloop Chapel, Erected in 1956, Craftsman -style church building with Gothic Revival influence; local Linville River stone on the exterior; Gothic-style lancet-arch window and door openings and buttressing. The steeple is supported by a weatherboarded, octagonal belfry with lancet-arch openings.
--Garrett Memorial Hospital/Sloop Hospital now Edwin Guy Building - erected in 1928 - rustic Craftsman-style rock-veneered frame building that was subsumed by additions for a larger, modern hospital over the course of some 70 years; selective demolition and restoration was completed in spring of 2007 to give new life to the original structure. This original H-shaped one-story hospital is attributed to William Erwin Franklin; stone from the Linville River
E.H. Sloop Chapel
--DAR Chapter House - one room log building erected in 1958-1959 of logs salvaged from a ca. 1904 dogtrot-plan house built by members of the Webb family on Little Plumtree Creek.
As interesting as the structures themselves are, there are great stories that were discovered in the research of these properties. For example, one of Founder Dr. Mary Martin Sloop’s pleas was for the bell tower. She wrote this in the July-September 1950 Crossnore School Bulletin:
“We can do without a Bell Tower, but we ought not to. A high one that lifts the bell – or bells—up in the air. The present bell is a Godsend …. Here a bell must wake up a campus of sleeping youngsters that don’t want to be awakened. The setting of our present bell is on a roof, down the side of a hill, and when the rope breaks, which isn’t infrequent, two boys on duty in the kitchen, grab a big frying pan apiece, and a big spoon, and go all over the campus, up one path and down another, making a terrible noise – but it’s effective. So, I still say we need a bell tower, higher up on the hill and add to this faithful bell tow more bells that have been offered to us, and the three will save the frying pans. We aim to make the bell tower artistic as well as useful. We will build it of river rock, put it in a prominent spot on the campus, landscape around it and keep it clean as a pin.”
Garrett Memorial Hospital/Sloop Hospital
“Obtaining the Crossnore School Historic District classification has been a multi-year process,” explained Dr. Phyllis H. Crain, executive director. “Davyd F. Hood of Raleigh was the consultant for the process and completed the mountains of research and paperwork. The school’s Historic District nomination was made by the State Historic Preservation Officer under the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Officer under the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-665).”
DAR Chapter House
The National Register is a list of properties "significant in American history, architecture, archaeology, and culture - a comprehensive index of the significant physical evidences of our national patrimony." Properties listed therein deserve to be preserved by their owners as part of the cultural heritage of our nation.
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