{"nrhp_refnum":"99000273","name":"Ellis Street Graded School Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Graig, Innes, Jackson, and Cemetery Sts.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Salisbury","county":"Rowan County","state":"NC","lat":35.67305693950004,"lon":-80.46918852906049,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1999-03-05","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Community Planning and Development","Education"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A residential historic district in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina, centred on the 1881 Ellis Street Graded School building and surrounding houses, mostly built between the late 1860s and the 1940s. It contains 77 contributing resources, including the school buildings and about sixty houses.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the district is locally significant for community development, as a residential area that grew around downtown Salisbury and along streetcar lines, and for education, through the Ellis Street Graded School, the town's oldest surviving public school building. It also argues the district is significant for its concentration of Craftsman bungalows and period revival houses.","narrative":"Residential district in Salisbury, North Carolina, built largely between 1867 and 1948 around the 1881 Ellis Street Graded School, a cruciform brick building set in a park-like setting at the end of W. Kerr Street. The school was the town's first graded public school and its oldest surviving public school building, and many of Salisbury's business and civic leaders were educated there. The surrounding streets grew as middle-class housing within walking distance of downtown and along a streetcar line that reached the area in 1907. Developers such as James Moyle, Frank A. Rankin and T.H. Vanderford subdivided former farmland into small lots from the 1900s to the 1920s. The district contains roughly sixty houses, including a long row of Craftsman bungalows with wood-shingle siding on W. Council Street and four matching Tudor Revival houses at W. Liberty and N. Ellis streets. Few modern intrusions remain, and the area is regarded as an intact example of early twentieth-century streetcar-era neighborhood growth.","period_of_significance":"1867-1948","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Italianate; Queen Anne; Craftsman bungalow; Tudor Revival; Colonial Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The school building was converted to school system administrative offices, and the 1904 high school was demolished in 1967; most resources are described as retaining their period character.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:42.01539-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/90/7220/47722090/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/99000273.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/99000273/230a987f79-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/99000273/230a987f79-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Ncpappy","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shober_Bridge.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Ncpappy</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:Shober_Bridge.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47722090","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Street_Graded_School_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19872973"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/rowan-county/ellis-street-graded-school-historic-district-99000273/"}