Derita High School Gymnasium
(ca. 1937)
The unique Stripped Classicism architectural style of the Derita High School Gymnasium distinguishes it from the county’s few remaining pre-World War II gyms.
6115 Rumple Rd, Charlotte, NC 28262
During the first half of the twentieth century, as basketball (invented in 1891 by John Naismith) grew in popularity across the United States, physical education overall became an integral component of the curriculum of American public school. As a result of those contemporaneous developments, it became important for local school systems to construct new buildings, particularly gymnasiums. Mecklenburg County was no exception. Charlotte high schools first organized basketball teams to play other schools in December 1917. Within three years, an eight-member basketball league of Mecklenburg County high schools was established. Derita High School was a member of that inaugural league.
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The 1930s witnessed the construction of several gymnasiums at the rural and small-town high schools operated by the county Board of Education. The New Deal’s Civil Works Administration (CWA) co-funded additional gyms at the Paw Creek, Berryhill, Long Creek, Pineville, Sharon, Oakhurst, Huntersville, and Bain high schools in 1934. Of those only the Long Creek High School gym remains. The CWA-built gymnasiums shared similar architecture: strictly utilitarian designs with no distinctive decorative details.
In November 1936, local voters approved nearly $2 million of school bonds, including funding for the construction of the Derita High School Gymnasium and several other gyms throughout the county. Unlike earlier high school gyms, these new gyms were designed by prominent Charlotte architects. Lucian Jackson Dale (1902-1957) was tapped to design the Derita High School gym. The native of Kinston, North Carolina, earned his architecture degree from North Carolina State College in 1924. Known for his innovative designs, Dale’s works included the Walgreens Drug Store at Fifth and North Tryon Streets, a Biltmore Dairy Farms on West Morehead Street, and two Coca Cola Bottling Company buildings (in Concord and Salisbury).
The Derita High School Gymnasium is one of only three extant gymnasiums built by the Mecklenburg County Board of Education before its 1960 merger with the Charlotte City Schools, the others being the gyms at Davidson and Long Creek High Schools. The Derita gym offered a rare example of the Stripped Classicism architectural style, a bold and locally unique expression of pre-World War II non-revivalist gymnasium design. The Derita High School Gymnasium is also the only surviving pre-World War II public building in the Derita community.