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8 <br /> NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval 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 number 7 Page 2 Ridge Road School <br /> Orange County, NC <br /> year. The Torians supported the operation of the school, which their children attended, and supplied <br /> water from their well.3 <br /> Walter and Maggie Torian had seven sons and a daughter, Emma, many of whom lived and worked as <br /> adults on the family's sizable farm that flanked Coleman Loop Road. Walter died in April 1958. In <br /> February 1963, Maggie, her children, and their spouses conveyed a 0.79-acre parcel west of the school <br /> fronting Coleman Loop Road to Emma and her husband Reverend Walter Warren Jones, whose family <br /> owned a neighboring farm. The Joneses subsequently erected a weatherboarded residence that was <br /> demolished after Emma donated the property to Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church in 2001.4 The <br /> Joneses' small, hip-roofed, brick, late-twentieth-century well house remains near the parcel's northeast <br /> corner. The gravel drive that extends from the grass lawn north of the school forks and continues west to <br /> what was the Joneses' lawn and north past the well house to Jones Grove Church Road. Remnants of the <br /> Joneses' landscaping include circular fieldstone borders around tree bases in the lawn. The south portion <br /> of the school parcel is also wooded. The 1.75-acre National Register boundary includes the school and <br /> west lots. <br /> Ridge Road School, 1932 <br /> Exterior <br /> The one-story, side-gable-roofed, German-sided, two-classroom school has a north-south orientation with <br /> the primary fagade facing east. On that elevation, two small shed rooms flank the entrance porch. Each <br /> shed room is lighted by a single double-hung four-over-four sash wood window on its east elevation. <br /> Plywood secures the openings. Four wide concrete-block steps rise to the porch, which has a narrow- <br /> board floor in deteriorated condition and a beadboard ceiling. Two single-leaf five-horizontal-panel doors <br /> provide classroom egress. <br /> The north and south elevations of the shed rooms and main block are blind. On the west elevation, groups <br /> of three double-hung eight-over-eight wood sash windows illuminate each classroom. Some glass panes <br /> are missing. Siding infill indicates that taller windows originally filled wider openings. The extant sash <br /> were likely installed in the 1960s. Although the original window configuration is unknown, architectural <br /> evidence indicates that perhaps as many as five double-hung multi-pane windows initially filled the <br /> openings. School plans and specifications published in the 1930s by the North Carolina Department of <br /> 3 Louis K.Watkins,telephone conversation with Heather Fearnbach,February 25,2023. <br /> 4 Ibid.;U. S. Census,Population Schedules, 1930-1950;"Walter E.Torian,"Durham Morning Herald,April 19, <br /> 1958,p.2;Orange County Deed Book 2345,pp.256,259;Plat Book 54,p. 194;Plat Book 81,p. 108;Doris Yvonne Brooks <br /> Johnson,telephone conversation with Heather Fearnbach,February 28,2023. Johnson was a student for three years beginning <br /> in 1948 when she entered first grade. She walked to school with her older brothers from her family's farm approximately 1.5 <br /> miles to the northeast off Brooks Road. <br />