Penland School Historic District

Penland School Historic District is a cluster of buildings around an open meadow on the campus of the Penland School of Crafts in Mitchell County, North Carolina. The buildings range from nineteenth-century log barns and frame farmhouses to Rustic Revival log buildings and Colonial Revival school buildings. The school grew out of the Seven Springs Baptist Industrial School, founded in 1905 by brothers Bill and Wesley Connolly, which the Episcopal Diocese later acquired as the Appalachian Industrial School in 1909. Lucy Morgan arrived in 1920 and developed a community weaving program that became the Penland Weavers and Potters, later the basis of the school incorporated in 1938. Its significance lies in its part in the handicraft revival in southern Appalachia, in Morgan's work there, and in its collection of buildings that reflect local log and frame traditions. The district contains thirty-five contributing and seventeen non-contributing resources.