Military Road School is an historic structure located in the Brightwood neighborhood in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

  It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 2003. The building now houses the Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School.

History

The Military Road School was established in 1864 to educate free-people of color. The site was formerly occupied by the barracks of Fort Stevens

Fort Stevens (Washington, D.C.)

Fort Stevens was part of the extensive fortifications built around Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War. It was constructed in 1861 as "Fort Massachusetts" and later enlarged by the Union Army and renamed "Fort Stevens" after Brig. Gen...

 and was located on what was then Military Road, which connected Washington’s Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 forts. Many freedmen and women settled near forts for protection and employment. It was one of the first schools in Washington to open after Congress authorized the education of African Americans. The students who attended school came from the neighborhood, traveled from other parts of upper Northwest Washington as well as from Montgomery County, Maryland

Montgomery County, Maryland

Montgomery County is a county in the U.S. state of Maryland, situated just to the north of Washington, D.C., and southwest of the city of Baltimore. It is one of the most affluent counties in the United States, and has the highest percentage of residents over 25 years of age who hold post-graduate...

. The school remained open until 1954 when the Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...

decision desegregated public schools in the United States.

Architecture

The front part of the present school building was one of first buildings designed by the office of the Municipal Architect, which had been established in 1909, and to be reviewed by the Commission of Fine Arts, which had been established in 1910. The two and a half story building was designed by Snowden Ashford. A large contemporary addition was completed behind the building in 2009.

The building is faced with red brick and is accented by stucco

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...

 panels and limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 trim. It is one room wide and has a central entrance porch. The large banks of multi-paned windows are located on the front and the sides of the building for maximum light. There are recessed brick panels on the back of the building. The gently flared hipped roof

Hip roof

A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

 features wide scrolled eaves and is topped by an octagon shaped cupola

Cupola

In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....

.