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Façade of the Administration Building looking north-northwest.

Stuart Robinson School

Site ID: LR-342

Educational; Residence
Settlement; Vernacular
Letcher
CRA
Unless specified, we cannot provide site location information.

Summary

Consultants working with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet worked to survey the Stuart Robinson School in 2025. These investigations documented the campus of the Stuart Robinson School, a c. 1921 Appalachian Settlement School located at 31 Stuart Robinson Road, Blackey, Letcher County, Kentucky.   In the early decades of the twentieth century, settlement schools in Appalachia were part of a wider trend in the region of educated outsiders establishing educational facilities in remote mountain communities.  The administrative, residential and support structures of the Stuart Robinson School are an example of that trend in Letcher County.  The school was founded by E. O. Guerrant in 1914 on a hillside location in Blackey as part of his Presbyterian home missionary work and moved to this larger campus site in 1921.  The Stuart Robinson School no longer serves an educational capacity.  It is currently in use by a religious organization and is available for public booking as an event and conference center.​

Northwest elevation and facade of the Girls’ Dormitory looking east.

Findings

The water tower and pumphouse looking southeast.

Consultation with Kentucky Heritage Council staff determined that the Stuart Robinson School is Eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as a Historic District under Criteria A and C. Under Criterion A, it is eligible as an excellent representation of the Appalachian settlement school movement in Letcher County, and under Criterion C, as an intact collection of vernacular academic architectural patterns often associated with Appalachian settlement schools.  The collection of campus structures includes: dormitories for boys and girls, a teacherage residential structure for faculty, a gymnasium, an administration building (rebuilt in 1932 after a fire destroyed the original structure), a dairy barn and silo, a retaining wall, a craft building, a cemetery, a water tower and pumphouse, a garage, and the following structures constructed after the period of significance of the school, a dining hall and kitchen, a stock shelter, an equipment shelter, a pergola and a picnic shelter.  No longer extant are the library, the superintendent’s cottage and the original kitchen/dining hall (replaced in 1996).

The focus of the Stuart Robinson School was on educating high school students.  The school’s curriculum offered a selection of courses, including statewide requirements such as English and Mathematics, foreign languages, various sciences, Bible study and elective courses like Agriculture, Music, Home Economics and Typing.  The school offered extracurricular activities such as sports, group picnics, hikes, parties, as well as folk music and dancing.  In the 1940s, the school was renowned for its folk dancing instruction, which was open to the wider community.




What's Cool?

​The Stuart Robinson School helps to document the regional trend of settlement schools in Appalachia in the early to mid-twentieth century.  Even after its affiliation with the Presbyterian Church ended in 1956, the campus continued to operate as an educational resource, serving as Letcher High School for four years until the completion of Letcher High School at Jeremiah.  In the late 1960s, the property was purchased and re-established as Calvary College, a four-year Christian liberal arts college.  The college would cease operations at the end of the 1970s, but the associated K-8 Calvary Christian Academy would continue operations until the late 1990s.  The alumni association, founded in the mid-1980s, remains active and has restored several of the original buildings on the campus as well as raised funds to construct a replacement kitchen/dining hall in 1996.  The interest in Appalachia (and its culture) by outsiders, evidenced in the settlement school at Blackey, continues today, perhaps, in more subtle ways.

Façade and northeast elevations of the dairy barn and silo looking west.

Related Materials

Façade of the Gymnasium looking southeast.

​Façade of the Gymnasium looking southeast.



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