{"nrhp_refnum":"09000396","name":"Bluff Point Graded School No. 3","other_names":["DHR File Number 066-5052"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"2595 Bluff Point Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Kilmarnock","county":"Northumberland County","state":"VA","lat":37.710586610000064,"lon":-76.33661422499995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2009-06-03","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Education","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-room, one-story wooden schoolhouse at 2595 Bluff Point Road near Kilmarnock, Northumberland County, Virginia, built in 1912-1913 to serve white children on Bluff Point Neck.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it represents an important stage in rural education on the Northern Neck, when two-room graded schools replaced one-room schools. It is said to be the only two-room schoolhouse for white students surviving in this geographically isolated area. It later served as a community house, and it remains largely intact, exemplifying early 20th-century healthy school design.","narrative":"Bluff Point Graded School #3 is a simple one-story wooden schoolhouse built in 1912-1913 on Bluff Point Neck, a peninsula in Northumberland County, Virginia. It has a rectangular plan, weatherboard siding, a hipped standing-seam metal roof, and a corner porch covering the two classroom doors. Banks of three large six-over-six windows on each side lit the classrooms. The school replaced two earlier Bluff Point schools and served local white children until it closed in 1932 after years of reduced use. In 1928 the dividing wall was removed and the building became a one-room school for grades one through three. A community league bought it in 1937 and added a kitchen and bathroom, and it became known as The Community House. The nomination presents it as a surviving example of the two-room graded school stage in a remote, water-bound area, and as an intact early 20th-century school that has remained a center of neighborhood life.","period_of_significance":"1912 - 1937","architect_builder":"Unknown","architectural_style":"No style","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Used as a community meeting hall; the building is described as architecturally intact apart from a 1937 kitchen and bathroom addition and minor changes.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:02.892486-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/12/6823/41682312/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/09000396.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/09000396/30e4874262-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/09000396/30e4874262-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"JLaurenJ","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bluff_Point_Graded_School.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">JLaurenJ</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bluff_Point_Graded_School.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41682312","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff_Point_Graded_School_No._3","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14712048"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/northumberland-county/bluff-point-graded-school-no-3-09000396/"}