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Lamar Elementary School, 970 Baker Street

2013 Endangered Properties List

Owner: Richmond County Board of Education

History and Significance:
Over the last few years, we have collectively listed historic neighborhood schools now considered surplus by the Board of Education. This year we include the Joseph R. Lamar School on Baker Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Located across from the Academy of Richmond County, the school opened September 24, 1934 with Mr. Arthur R. Tones as principal, who was formerly the assistant principal at John Milledge School. It was also known as the Sixth Ward School and served the white population of the area. The school was named after Lamar who had a distinguished career
as a lawyer and would later become Supreme Court Justice of the United States in 1911. An article in The Augusta Chronicle reported that the first day’s enrollment at the school was 387 and members of the faculty included Miss Clemmons, Miss Lila Davidson, Miss Margaret Elliott, Miss Beulah Wise, Miss Juanita Lucky, Miss Sara Trayler, Miss Sara Mallard, Miss Mary Alice Legwin, and Miss Gertrude Poole who was listed as the pianist. The two story red brick school
was built in the Art Moderne style and is very similar in appearance and layout to the former Davidson School on Telfair Street completed in 1933. Lamar Elementary has been vacated with the opening of the new Lamar-Milledge Elementary school on Eve Street. With the success of William Robinson School being rehabilitated into condominiums and efforts to find preservation minded buyers for the other school buildings, we continue to advocate for the reuse of these neighborhood landmarks.

Threat: Declared surplus by the Board of
Education and recently vacated.
Potential Uses: Mixed use; commercial office
space; income producing residential apartments;
educational facility.
Preservation Tools: (1) eligible for listing in
the National Register of Historic Places, which
if actually listed would make it eligible for all
programs of the National Register including
available grant funds and the tax incentives for
certified rehabilitations.