Historic School Targeted for Rescue - washingtonpost.com

1927 Site That Served African Americans Is Among 11 Statewide Listed as Imperiled

Mae Williams grew up in rural Polk County, N.C., yet the Ridgeley School in Capitol Heights reminds her of her youth -- the three small classrooms, the bank of windows that lets in sunlight, the playground out front.

"The one I attended was very similar, and it looks so much like it," the 62-year-old Mitchellville resident said. "I can visualize the school so well."

Ridgeley is one of about 5,000 "Rosenwald schools" in the South built in the 1920s and '30s for African American children before public schools were integrated. Williams attended a similar Rosenwald school in North Carolina.

Built 80 years ago on Central Avenue, the Ridgeley School is one of 11 sites identified as Maryland's most endangered historic places in a recent campaign by Preservation Maryland, a nonprofit organization.

The "Endangered Maryland" list is the first statewide catalogue of threatened historic properties. Preservation Maryland plans to publish such lists annually, modeled after the National Trust for Historic Preservation's yearly list of the most endangered historic sites nationwide.

The Maryland list includes four sites in the Washington region: the Ridgeley School; Comsat Laboratories in Montgomery County; the Bond-Simms tobacco barn at Greenwell State Park in St. Mary's County; and Doughoregan Manor, a colonial plantation in Howard County.

Kristen Harbeson, education and outreach director of Preservation Maryland, said all these sites face "immediate threats."

"A lot of these sites suffer, there are pretty significant challenges facing them, but there is a solution that's possible," Harbeson said. "We're hoping that through educating people about what sites are out there and what challenges they're facing, there might be different solutions. . . . Sometimes it's a matter of money or getting political support. Sometimes it's a matter of encouraging the owner to do something."

The Comsat Laboratories building, along Interstate 270 near Clarksburg, is a space-age building made of aluminum and glass that was designed in 1969 by Cesar Pelli, the Argentine American architect.

The building is considered a significant example of Pelli's early work in the post-World War II era. Pelli later designed airport terminals and skyscrapers across the United States, as well as Malaysia's Petronas Twin Towers, which were the world's tallest buildings when constructed in the 1990s.

Preservation Maryland says the Comsat building could be substantially altered or destroyed by its owners' intentions to develop the campus.

Doughoregan Manor, built in the early 1700s, has been occupied by members of Founding Father Charles Carroll's family for centuries. It is historically significant because it is the only home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence still in his family's hands.