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Ramsey School

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1925–1926, Garry and Sheffey. Southeast corner of Ramsey and Russell sts.

Built a year after the adjacent Municipal Building, this dark brick Tudor Revival building was Bluefield's junior high school. A narrow central pavilion on Ramsey Street contains a low, fourcentered Tudor arch sheltering the recessed main entrance, while wings on both sides are lined with classroom windows. The wings are of different heights, and the one to the west, rising nearly as high as that of the central mass, gives the building an unfortunate hunchback appearance.

The site is steep, even for Bluefield, and it indirectly earned the school a place in Ripley's Believe It or Not, which reported that all seven entrances were on grade but that each entered a different floor level. Ramsey's other claim to fame—that it was the first school east of the Mississippi to have a safety patrol—was probably the result of the first.

Writing Credits

Author: 
S. Allen Chambers Jr.

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