St. Augustine’s University:A Raleigh HBCU in bankruptcy limbo

As noted in a recent previous post, I decided to try and to a photo profile of the St. Augustine’s University campus in Raleigh because I knew the school was closed after unsuccessful attempts to weather considerable financial difficulties. I also knew it was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and I was hoping to get quality photos of the campus before it was allowed to fall into irretrievable disrepair. 

Alas, visitors are required to stop at a security checkpoint, where after telling the security guard why I was there, I was told in no uncertain terms that the school was closed and I’d have to turn around and leave. Which I did. 

I learned later that in the short time since on-campus classes ceased in May, there had already been some vandalism on the grounds. Learning about that tempered my initial reaction to being turned away at the checkpoint

I went on to photograph nearby Oakwood Cemetery and the Ruins of St. Agnes Hospital (see two previous posts), after which I doubled back to stroll down Oakwood Avenue and capture the St. Augustine’s campus pictures you see here, all taken from outside the property fence. I’ve been doing college or university campus photo profiles for more than 15 years, and this one is undoubtedly my least Ifavorite. But it’s a historic site that might not have much time left, and I wanted to try.

St. Augustine’s was a private institution founded in 1867 by Episcopal clergy to educate formerly enslaved African American people. Through its years, it grew from a normal school to a junior college to a four-year liberal arts institution. In 1883, it survived a fire that destroyed all its academic buildings because white fire companies refused to fight the blaze.

Goold Hall and lawn, shown in the photo leading off the post, was a place for events and community gatherings at St. Augustine’s. It was named for Rev. Edgar Hunt Goold, who in 1916 became the school’s fifth principal and, in 1925, he became its first president. That same year, the school changed its name to St. Augustine’s College and offered its first courses for college credit.

The name became St. Augustine’s University in 2012 at a time it prepared to offer master’s degrees. But the school began to experience serious financial troubles in the 1990s just as it reached its peak enrollment of 1,918 in 1992. 

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accrediting agency placed the university on warning in late 2001, and on probation two years later. St. Augustine’s managed to eliminate its deficit and was removed from probation in 2004. But in 2013, an audit uncovered disorganized accounting and improper issuance of checks, and by 2016 the school was back on probation.

Once more the school dug out of trouble and was removed from probation in 2018 … until landing there again a third time in 2022. After appeals and litigation to retain its accreditation over the next few years, and a brief reprieve by an arbitration panel, the accreditation agency voted in 2024 to remove the school as a member, a decision upheld on appeal the following year.

St. Augustine’s entered bankruptcy proceedings in April of this year and announced it would cease on-campus classes in May, thereafter offering online classes for certificates and apprentice programs. It also said it would pursue a way to restore accreditation.

The Wikipedia entry for St. Augustine's gives a very thorough accounting of the school's history of difficulties if you're interesting in learning more.

There aren't any more quality images from the marginal photo shoot of the campus, but if you'd like to peruse images of the full shoot, follow the link in this sentence.   

Above and below: There was no signage to help me identify this building, but based on its location on a campus map, I believe this is the Taylor Wellness Center. 

  

Above and below: Again, no signage, but based on its place on the campus map, I believe this is the Tuttle Building used for ROTC training. 

The familiar stone slab (above) greeting visitors at the main Oakwood Avenue entrance. Below, just to the right of the stone slab is this access drive … and a security checkpoint in the white hut in the distance. 

Above: I believe this was the campus chapel, but I’m not sure. 

Above: I don’t know what this building is, and even though the small blue sign in the right foreground says Chapel, I’m pretty sure this building is not the chapel. It’s a sign intended for the building in the photo above this one. 

Above: This sign is on a median in front of the school but on the south side of Oakwood Avenue.

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug.

Ruins that deserve far better

On June 3, I traveled to the northeast fringe of downtown Raleigh hoping to do a campus profile of St. Augustine’s University, an Historically Black College or University. 

When I arrived at the campus, I had to stop at a security checkpoint, and after explaining why I was there, I was told I was out of luck because the school was closed. I was asked to leave. 

So I moved on to plans B and C. Plan B was to do a walk-around in Oakwood Cemetery next door (see yesterday’s post), and Plan C was to make of photographs of the structure you see in the lead-off photo.

The structure is the former St. Agnes Hospital, which technically is on the grounds of the St. Augustine’s campus, but it stands separately on modest acreage between the closed university and the cemetery. 

I didn’t look up any of these landmarks before I drove out there; the trip was spur of the moment. So I didn’t know what I would be dealing with when I got there. (I don’t recommend this for photography enthusiasts; you should know what to expect if you invest time and travel to do a shoot of this sort).

The hospital ruins certainly surprised me; when I got home afterward and looked up its history, I was saddened, partly because of what has become of this historic facility, and partly — maybe even mostly — because of the city of Raleigh’s protracted indecision about what to do with it, if anything. 

St. Agnes was open for about 65 years, from 1896 to 1961, and it served as a hospital and a training center for physicians and nurse for African Americans. It initially operated out of a former college president’s residence on the school campus and didn’t move into this then-new building until 1909. Nurses took chemistry, sociology and psychology classes at St. Augustine’s College (the name it went by back then) as well as the regular nursing curriculum as part of their training.

In short order, the two other hospitals in the city that would treat African Americans — Rex Hospital and Shaw University’s Leonard Hospital — closed, leaving St. Agnes the only option for the community’s black residents.

St. Agnes struggled financially during almost its entire period of operation although various — and multiple — fund-raising campaigns helped sustain it through the years, including a particularly difficult period during the Great Depression. 

But the building eventually fell into disrepair, was condemned in 1955 and was closed six years later after Wake County opened its first public hospital, which treated patients of all races. 

In 1979, the city declared the building a historic landmark, which helps explain why it remains standing today. And it does so with the help of several steel support beams (the long orange-colored slabs of metal you see in the pictures).

Upon its closing, the land and buildings were transferred to St. Augustine’s, which used one of the buildings for housing of female students. In the interim, various plans and ideas for the site’s future have been discussed, to no avail. 

In the most recent development, a feasibility study was funded in 2022 to determine whether the ruins could be preserved or renovated. Nothing has come out of that that I know of. 

One thing I thought of was to make the building a museum for Raleigh area African American physicians, nurses, and their medical training and education. Perhaps students, alumni and/or faculty at St. Augustine’s as well as Shaw University and North Carolina Central University in Durham, two other HBCUs in the Raleigh-Durham Triangle, might be interested in participating or leading the way.  

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug.

Shaw University, an HBCU in Raleigh, has much to boast about in the education of African-Americans

When I did my extensive photo walk-through of downtown Raleigh in March of 2023, I didn’t use a map of the downtown as a primary guide to find places. There was an occasion or two, when I pulled up a map on my phone when I was trying to pinpoint specific places, but that was it. 

Because I hadn’t used a map as a main guide, it wasn’t until after the shoot that I realized I had been so close to several important landmarks ... and had missed shooting them. 

For the most part, I rectified those omissions on Sunday, May 17 — more than three years later — when I spent several hours walking through the campuses of two private colleges and returned to the heart of downtown for several other things I had missed in 2023. 

Today’s blog subject, Shaw University, was one of them. The pictures of the other “misses,” including one other small, private university, will be presented here in the next few days.  

I picked a Sunday because Sundays traditionally are low-traffic days on college campuses. Also, both schools recently had their spring graduation ceremonies, which led me to believe the likelihood of there being many students on campus to work around would be slim to none. I was correct on both counts, especially the first, Shaw, which I began to shoot about 9:30 a.m.

Shaw University, founded on Dec. 1, 1865, is the oldest historically black college or university in the southern United States. It sits on the southern fringe of downtown Raleigh next door to the more contemporary Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts (1932) and a short distance from the popular Red Hat Amphitheater, an outdoor concert and theater venue.

I was on the Martin Marietta campus when I saw the interesting building pictured in the lead-off photo. So that picture actually dates to the March 2023 shoot. I didn’t find out until after I got home that the building was the historic Estey Hall of Shaw University, which today is used as the chief administration building for the school. It dates to 1874 and is the oldest surviving building on campus.

As the building’s history (found in its Wikipedia entry you can access by following the link in the above paragraph) conveys, Shaw began as a seminary, and Estey was built after the school opened admissions to women. When Estey opened, it became the first building in the U.S. constructed to educate women. 

The school is named for Elijah Shaw, a wealthy Massachusetts textile manufacturer, property owner and philanthropist who in 1870 became the primary benefactor of Shaw with a donation of $5,000, which in today's currency would have the purchasing power of $127,100. The donation enabled the construction of Shaw Hall, the first building on campus. The hall was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for the James E. Cheek library.  

In 1970, Estey Hall had fallen in such disrepair that it was closed for renovation and to enable the historic structure to be preserved as a vital landmark on campus. It reopened in 1993 but it was still closed in 1973, when it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it also is a Raleigh Historic Landmark.  

Some more photos of Estey, from my shoot on May 17, appear further down in this post.  

Shaw offers 21 majors for bachelor of arts or science degrees. It also offers a master of divinity, a master of arts in Christian Education and or Christian Leadership, and its School of Business and Professional Leadership offers a master of science in Early Childhood Education through the Department of Education and Child Development.

From 1888 to 1916, Shaw had a School of Law, the first of its kind for African-Americans. Shaw graduated 57 law students before it closed. 

In 1968, Shaw became the first black college to own and operate a radio station, WSHA. The university sold the station in July 2018. 

And it was at Shaw, in 1881, that the country’s first four-year medical school opened. There’s more about this below in the caption under the picture for twin-turreted Leonard Hall, the medical school’s home, and the adjacent former Leonard Hospital, now Tyler Hall. 

The school also played a critical role in earning heretofore neglected honors for African American World War II soldiers. In 1993, the U.S. Army commissioned a team of scholars at Shaw to investigate why no African American soldiers who served in the war had been awarded the Medal of Honor. The team concluded that the omission was the result of racial discrimination. 

The team recommended and named 10 soldiers who should receive the medal and sent its findings to the U.S. Department of Defense. In April 1996, the Defense Department agreed that seven of the nominees should receive the medal, and on Jan. 13, 1997, President Clinton awarded those medals. Only one of the seven honored soldiers was still alive and on hand to receive his medal. The remainder were awarded to family members of the soldiers.

Shaw is a co-founding member (with Howard, Hampton, Lincoln and Virginia Union universities) of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA), the oldest African American athletic conference in the U.S. Shaw athletes have won CIAA championships in football, volleyball and men's and women’s basketball and tennis.

To view a full gallery of photos from my shoot at Shaw University, follow the link in this sentence. 

The James E. Cheek Resource Center (library), is made of concrete and steel framing with an exterior of brick masonry and metal panels (above). George C. Debnam Hall, which houses administration and registration offices (below), is made of light-colored brick and concrete.  

Above and below are two views of the bell tower in the middle of campus. The university says the tower bell marks a student’s academic journey at Shaw. Students ring the bell when they start school their first year and again after they graduate four years later. 

Roberts Science Hall (above) and Yancy Institute for Health, Social and Community Research (below) are attached on campus. 

The campus chapel (above), Spaulding Gymnasium (below) and Tupper Hall (second photo below) are near each other in the middle of campus. A statue of a bear (third photo below), the school mascot, sits in front of the gymnasium. Tupper is named for Shaw founder Henry Martin Tupper, a Baptist minister and the school's first president.

Historic Leonard Hall (above), a twin-turret Romanesque Revival style building, was the first four-year medical school in the U.S. It opened in 1881 and is named for Judson Wade Leonard, a philanthropist and a donor for the building’s construction. He also was a brother-in-law to Shaw founder Henry Martin Tupper. The medical school trained 400 African-Americans as physicians while in operation. Leonard Hospital (below), which today is Tyler Hall, was opened in 1912 next to the medical school to give students opportunities for practical training. The medical school and hospital closed in 1918-19. Like Estey Hall, both buildings are historic landmarks and currently undergoing restoration. Today, Tyler houses the school’s philosophy and religion departments. 

The high-rise residence halls above and below are perpendicular to each other and close to the Willie E. Gary Student Center (second photo below), which houses the student dining hall. 

Above: Adjacent to one of the high-rise residence halls is this outdoor basketball court. 

There are several places on campus where people can get a nice view of the downtown Raleigh skyline. Above, just north of Cheek library, is one such location. Blount Street passes under a pedestrian bridge connecting a part of campus (below). 

Coming tomorrow: The campus of William Peace University