Normal School for Colored Girls
- Architect
- Leon E. Dessez
- Style
- Colonial Revival
- City
- Washington, DC
The Normal School for Colored Girls was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1851 by Myrtilla Miner, a schoolteacher who had been refused permission to teach African-American girls in Mississippi and instead built a school of her own in the capital, with encouragement from Henry Ward Beecher and funding from a Quaker philanthropist. It was the first normal school — a school for training teachers — in the District of Columbia and the fourth in the United States.
the building
The Georgia Avenue building. In 1913, by then known as Miner Normal School, the institution built a Colonial Revival school building on Georgia Avenue NW, designed by Leon E. Dessez; that building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
the style
The 1913 building was designed in the Colonial Revival style, a choice reflecting the era's preference for classical, colonial-referencing schoolhouses over the mission's earlier, humbler quarters.
More on Colonial Revivalsignificance
In 1929 Congress accredited the school as the four-year Miner Teachers College. It merged with Wilson Teachers College, which trained white students, in 1955 to form the District of Columbia Teachers College, which in turn merged with two other colleges in 1977 to become the University of the District of Columbia.
nearby
- Banneker Recreation Center
- Founders Library
- James Ormond Wilson Normal School
- First African New Church (Church of the New Jerusalem)
- Clifton Terrace
- Blanche Kelso Bruce Elementary School