City Directories and History: The Gray Court-Owings School is significant as an excellent and largely intact example of Colonial Revival style school architecture in the upstate and for its association with the growth and development in education in northern Laurens County in the first half of the twentieth century. The Gray Court-Owings School is a two-story central brick building constructed in 1914 with a flanking one-story brick-veneered high school building to the north and a one-story brick-veneered auditorium to the south, both built in 1928. When the flanking buildings, designed in the Colonial Revival style with Tuscan order porticos, were added in 1928, a two-story portico of the Tuscan order was added to the entrance of the 1914 building. Originally designed in the Renaissance Revival style with baroque massing, the building assumed a Classical or Colonial Revival appearance with the addition of the 1928 portico. The main building is accessed by a monumental stair with flanking wide cast stone-capping cheek walls. Each building has a hipped metal roof. In the 1930s a one-story frame potato house was built to help local farmers preserve their crops. This outbuilding contributes to the historic and architectural character of the property. Listed in the National Register April 21, 2004. [Courtesy of the SC Dept. of Archives and History]
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