Take a look at this Google Maps image:

This is the very small town of Lawrenceville, Virginia, near the North Carolina border, home at its peak in the 1950s to about 2,200 people, and now home to just over 1,000.

Do you see that empty area to the left of town in the image? That is the former Saint Paul’s College, an Episcopal-aligned historically black college, which had, as far as I was able to tell, a total student body in the low 100s—282 in 1961. The linked article says about 80 percent of the students were from Virginia; I’m assuming nearly all the rest were from North Carolina. Here’s a bit of the history. Read the whole piece:

Richmond Times-Dispatch describes Lawrenceville as a town of law-abiding, God-fearing, church-going folks, creating an atmosphere for the “formation of studious habits and the development of good character.”

[Episcopal] Archbishop Russell purchased land for the first buildings, giving a note for $1,000 “without a dollar in hand or a cent pledged.” By 1919 the campus included 40 buildings—three of which were brick—on 1600 acres of land. Listed value of the campus at that time was $250,000.

The original campus building was called the Saul Building ( left), a two-story, three- room frame structure. The Fine Arts Building (1900) was originally the principal’s home. Memorial Chapel (1904) was the first brick building on campus. These three buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The campus showpiece is now the 1928 Chicago Building (below) constructed with student labor. It housed the administration, the auditorium, and classrooms.

After the college closed, the campus was placed on the block in 2014.

Here and here are some photos of the campus up close. Here’s how the end came:

In the 21st century St. Paul’s began to experience financial problems. These were compounded by a loss of SACS accreditation in 2011. Still a lawsuit helped the school receive a stay of execution. But the problems did not go away, and enrollment fell to fewer than 100. After 125 years, St. Paul’s closed in 2013.

This is an urbanism story, isn’t it? These small colleges, of which there were many, were analogous to, and complementary with, small towns. It’s interesting, because this is not a land-use question per se, or even a commerce one, like the story of downtowns emptying out for malls and big-box stores. It’s really a story of concentration and “embiggening.” That in some ways covers all of these changes: a few big cities whose economies drive the country, big chains with large stores replacing Main Street. Bigger cars. Wider roads. I wrote this piece about supermarket design, and how this embiggening holds even down to the level of the size of shopping carts and the widths between aisles in stores.

Someone on Twitter, in regard to the colleges, noted:

The whole defunct/ghost college thing is deeply interesting from many angles. There are probably more dead ones than living. Unlike malls and Pizza Hut buildings, they’re generally not repurposed because of deed/title issues tied up in the charters, so the sites linger on in ghost form.

To that I’d add that it’s one thing to repurpose a building in a commercial zone, but another thing entirely to repurpose an entire campus of different types/sizes of buildings without street frontage. I imagine there are some cases where it’s been done, but it’s not easy from a design or business perspective, let alone whatever legal/property issues arise.

This is something I think I’ll be learning more about. It’s a very interesting issue tangential to the question of small towns and small cities, and not just their declining economic fortunes, but their declining place in American life.

Related Reading:

An Embryonic City

It’s Good To Be Rural King

Rural Multifamily

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