HPC agenda 022598 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• 013 • ' PERIOD AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE - - CHECK AND JUSTIFY BELOW _.PREHISTORIC -.AACHEOLUGY •PREHISTORIC _ .COMMUNITY PLANNING _ LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE _ RELIGION ..-_. 1400. / 499 _,,,AACHEOLOGYaHISTORIC _CONSERVATION _LAW _SCIENCE . 150001599 __AGRICULTURE ' ' _ECONOMICS _LITERATURE _SCULPTURE _ 160001699 X ARCHITECTTURE XC EOUCATION _.MILITARY __SOCIAL/HUMANITARIAN _ 1700- 1799 J4RT _ENGINEERING ._MUSIC _THEATER - - - - X1800. 1899 _.COMMERCIF` ,_UPLORATIOWSMLEMENT _PHILOSOPHY _TRANSPORTATION - _ 1900- _.COMMUNICAnoms JNOUSTRY ' " + - _PCUTICS/GOVERNMENT _OTHER (SPECIFY) JNVENTION SPECIFIC DATES 1845 - 1864 BUILDER/ARCHITECT STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Bingham School at Oaks is an interesting complex of buildings from several eras located in a pleasant rural setting in the rolling Piedmont farmland of western Orange County . The complex includes an L-shaped house composed of small early nineteenth century buildings and the more ambitious mid-nineteenth century Greek Revival house probably built for the Binghams , plus several outbuildings . This was the site of the Bingham School from 1845 until 1864 , one of a series of4North Carolina locations of a school established by William J . Bingham in Hillsborough and continued by his sons and grandsons , . which . gained a . statewide . reputation for . academic . excellence . The Bingham School property at Oaks , North Carolina , is a group of buildings used by William James Bingham and his sons as a school for boys prioroto and during the Civil War . Bingham was the son of the Reverend William James Bingham of Glasgow , the founder and first headmaster of the first Bingham School , located in Pittsboro in 1793 . The Reverend Bingham gave up his school from 1801 to 1805 , when he taught Latin and • Greeklat ' the new University of. North Carolina at Chapel. Hill , . . where .William James was born . According to his grandson Robert, writing in Ashe ' s - B16gtAphlcdl oHistory . of North , Carolina , the Reverend Bingham left the University about 1806 and reopened his private school in2Hillsborough because the boys . who came to the University .were. so_ poorly prepared . DgHe thus afforded his sons and grandsons an opportunity to - participate in what - the AshhVille * Citiien ' Times of 1921 referred to as " the only institution of learning of any grade in the United States which has been administered continuously from grandfather to gra5dson . by three - successive generations of headmasters so as to touch three centuries . " The school was relocated at Mt . Repose , eleven * miles ' northwest of Hillsborough , about 1810 , where it remained until the Reverend Bingham ' s death in 1826 . His son William James administered the school in Hillsborough until 1845 , when he moved the school t yet another= location twelve miles southwest of Hillsborough in an area known Oaks . It is on- this site that the only buildings associated with the school at ly of its many locations are still in existence . William James purchased the Oaks property , including approximately 370 acres hounded by Cane Creek and the Hillsborough Road , from Alexander Morrow in 1844 . He , > aid Aforrow twenty- five hundred dollars ( $ 2500 ) for the property , which suggest that there may have been at least one structure already on it . New arrivals to the area in 1345 recalled that they " reached the small cluster of frame buildings at the Oaks caT.munity , passed the Binghams ' newly acquired farm and academy buildings on the left