{"nrhp_refnum":"12001089","name":"Harrison, Richard B., School","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"605 W. Noble & 405 S. Brevard Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Selma","county":"Johnston County","state":"NC","lat":35.53812793800006,"lon":-78.29102891599996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2012-12-26","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Education","Black","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A former African American public school campus on the west side of Selma, Johnston County, North Carolina, on 6.84 acres of historically African American residential land. The surviving buildings include an agricultural building and bricklaying shop (1953; 1965), a gymnasium and classroom building (1955; renovated 2009), and an elementary classroom building (1956), designed by W. W. Hook and B. Atwood Skinner.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the campus is significant as an important pre-integration African American school in Johnston County and as a locally significant example of modernism applied to a public school campus. It states the period of significance as 1953 to 1970, the year county schools integrated, and invokes criteria consideration G for a property less than fifty years old.","narrative":"Along West Noble and South Brevard Streets on the west side of Selma, the Richard B. Harrison School campus is a cluster of mid-twentieth-century brick buildings on about seven acres. It served African American students from the late nineteenth century into the 1980s, and the surviving group dates from 1953 to 1956. The agricultural building and bricklaying shop were completed in 1953 and expanded in 1965. The gymnasium and its three-classroom wing followed in 1955, and an elementary classroom building was completed in 1956. Architects W. W. Hook and B. Atwood Skinner designed the gymnasium and the classroom building, which has a central corridor and exposed concrete rafters. The school's main 1935 building, financed under New Deal programs, was demolished in 1995. The buildings are regarded as a local example of modernist school design and as evidence of efforts to obtain facilities for African American students comparable to those of white schools in the county.","period_of_significance":"1953-1970","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Modern Movement","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The elementary school building remains unoccupied; the gymnasium is used for community basketball and houses a Head Start preschool; the agricultural building is used by the alumni association as its headquarters.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:42.715669-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/84/7209/47720984/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/12001089.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47720984","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Harrison_School","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19462211"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/johnston-county/harrison-richard-b-school-12001089/"}