User:Doncram/February DYKs/Gillespie-Selden Historic District

The Gillespie-Selden Historic District, in Cordele, Georgia, is a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The listing included 87 contributing buildings, two contributing structures, and a contributing site, on 50 acre. It also included 37 non-contributing buildings.

The district is an African-American residential neighborhood which includes homes, churches, a few commercial buildings and the Gillespie-Selden Institute.

Location: Roughly bounded by Railroad, 10th, and 15th Sts., and 16th Ave. Cordele, GA Architecture: Queen Anne, Bungalow/craftsman Historic function: Domestic; Commerce/trade; Education; Religion; Health Care Historic subfunction: Single Dwelling; Multiple Dwelling; Business; Educational Related Housing; Religious Structure

school / institute: Within the Gillespie-Selden Historic District, the outreach missionary role of Dr. Augustus S. Clark (1874-1959) and of St. Paul Presbyterian Church is significant to the development of the neighborhood. Dr. Clark completed his theological training at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1897; he was sent by the Presbyterian National Board of Missions to Cordele in 1898 as a missionary to help the struggling Portis Memorial Presbyterian Church. During that same year, a loan was secured from the Board of the Church Erection Fund of the General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church for the construction of a new church building to be named St. Paul Presbyterian Church. / In 1902, Dr. Clark and his wife, Anna, realized that there were less than adequate educational institutions for African-Americans to attend in Cordele as well as in the entire southwest region of the state. Dr. Clark taught elementary-level and Sunday-school classes in the basement of St. Paul Presbyterian Church but found that he needed more space. Dr. Clark made an appeal to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church for funds to build a school in Cordele. By 1904, enough money had been donated by white members of northern Presbyterian churches, especially the Gillespie family of Pittsburgh, that three buildings of the school complex were constructed. In honor of the Gillespie family, Dr. Clark named the school the Gillespie Normal School. During its operating years, the institute included the school, a hospital, a nursing school, boarding houses/dorms, and recreational facilities, of which all but the boys' dormitory survive today. In 1933, the school merged with the Selden Institute in Brunswick and the name was changed from Gillespie Normal School to Gillespie-Selden Institute. '''During the 1940s, the Gillespie-Selden Institute was the only black accredited high school in Cordele. The school drew its students from not just Cordele but the entire eastern seaboard below New York.''' The school was closed in 1956 due to a citywide consolidation of the school system. The Gillespie-Selden Institute exemplifies the type of private often church-related schools for African-Americans established in Georgia during a period of time when support for public schools for blacks was weak.