Orange County NC Website
14 <br />NPS Form 10-900-a OMB No. 1024-0018 <br />(8-86) <br />United States Department of the Interior <br />National Park Service <br />NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES <br />CONTINUATION SHEET <br />Section 7 Page 3 Mumhey School <br />name of property <br />Orange County. NC <br />• county and state <br />building at the northeast corner of the boiler room. There is a doorway on the east elevation of the <br />boiler room below grade and concrete stairs that lead downward towards the door. The top half of <br />the boiler room walls and the roof has been destroyed. <br />Interior of main building (See attached' floor plan): <br />The school's plan is arranged in adouble-loaded east west running corridor with six primary <br />rooms. The front entrance opens directly into what could have been a classroom. However, <br />according to oral history source Mike Giovanni, it is possible that the side entrance located on the <br />east elevation was used by students as the primary entrance to the school. The central classroom <br />containing the front entry opens into the central corridor. Boys' and girls' bathrooms are located to <br />the south off entry foyers at each end of the corridor to the east and west. Double-doors with ten- <br />light transoms and glazing in the upper halves separate the east and west end foyers from the <br />hallway, auditorium, and secondary exits. The~two central rooms on the south portion of the <br />building are combined through an opening in their shared wall to make a combined <br />library/cafeteria room. A portion at the east end of the combination room was partitioned for use <br />as the principal's office. Due to the creation of the principal's office, there is no door from the <br />eastern section of the library/cafeteria. To the west of the [ibrary/cafeteria is the kitchen which has <br />a pass-through window on the north side of the shared wall. All other rooms contain an original <br />wooden five-horizontal-panel door with a metal or glass doorknob. Each room also contains one <br />high, eight-light casement window that opens to the hallway for ventilation purposes. The oak <br />floors are substantially intact but portions have been removed due to damage. The walls are <br />plaster except for the horizontal bead-board wainscoting that extends a tittle more than halfway up <br />the wall in the halfway. The baseboards and window and door surrounds are simple. An original <br />decorative pressed-metal ceiling treatment and a narrow pressed-metal egg-and-dart crown <br />molding still exists, though damaged, in most of the rooms. The bathrooms retain their original <br />toilets and urinals contained in bead-board stalls. The floors in both the girls' and boys' bathrooms <br />are concrete and the sinks appear to date to c. 1.955-1975. <br />Auditorium Addition Exterior: • <br />The Murphey School auditorium is remarkably intact, containing Hearty all of its original <br />materials, windows, and architectural features. Added to the main building in 1936 and <br />neoclassical in style with a classical Doric portico supported~by four square-in-section <br />paneled columns, the brick auditorium is a tall one-story building rectangular in plan with a <br />wooden cornice and wide frieze. The portico does not extend the full width of the auditorium <br />and its pediment is punctuated by a lunette window with a keystone in its center with a simple <br />wooden cornice and frieze. The auditorium and its portico have front-gable v-crimp metal <br />covered roofs with a small arched eyebrow dormer on the east and west roof slopes of the <br />