HISTORY

The Baltimore Village School, located at 575 Baltimore Drive in Cramerton, North Carolina, was built by Stuart Cramer, in the late 1920s for the children of African American men and women who worked in Cramer Mills and Cramer's dairy farm and orchards. In 2003, Fred Glenn purchased the school from Burlington Industries after finding out the town's fire department was going to use it for a control burn.  Glenn's mother, Mary Lucinda Adams, and his aunt Helen Falls Holmes, earned their early education at the school. "That school was our everything, our all-in-all, our community center, our theater," Glenn said.  "And in that time you couldn't just walk into a cinema."  Each week movie reels would be projected on a screen inside the school.  When the weather grew hot, the screen would be placed in the yard outside the school and people would line their chairs up outside.  ~ source Gaston Gazette

In 2013, the school was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places Study List.  In 2020, the school was designated as an historic structure by the Gaston County Historic Preservation Commission (the first designation in Cramerton).  In 2022, the Baltimore Village School filed its Articles of Incorporation, installed a Board of Directors and has received its 501(c)(3) designation.  

The Glenn Family and the Baltimore Village School, Inc. plan to restore the school to its former self and use the building as a community center and museum focusing on the history of the Baltimore Village neighborhood, the school itself, and the role that African Americans played in the history of Cramerton and Gaston County.