Mecklenburg County puts historic school building on sale

MECKLENBURG COUNTY

Mecklenburg County is selling Torrence-Lytle School, a Huntersville campus built for Black students in 1937, with the aim of building preservation.

A historic Huntersville school that was the centerpiece of a historically Black community is for sale.

Mecklenburg County and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission are seeking a new owner to preserve the Torrence-Lytle School campus. The county invested $500,000 last year to repair the historic 1937 building, including a new roof and structural repairs. 

“This is one of the last buildings from the county’s 1930s effort to build high schools for African Americans,” Historic Landmarks Department director Stewart Gray said in a statement. “It’s important we save this building, because so many others like it have been lost.”

Torrence-Lytle School — originally the Huntersville Colored School — opened in 1937 as the only public high school for Black students in northern Mecklenburg County. Its seven rooms held classes for grades 1-11 were offered and included 181 students and five teachers with three for elementary grades and two for high school.

An eight-classroom addition and cafeteria were built in 1952, followed by a 12-classroom addition in 1957. The school was also a cultural anchor for Pottstown, the historically Black neighborhood that dates to the 1890s.  

Torrence-Lytle closed in 1966, 12 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Topeka (Kansas) Board of Education decision declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Since then, the gymnasium was converted into the David B. Waymer Recreation Center.

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