23. Witherspoon School for Colored Children

184 Witherspoon Street was the first home of the Witherspoon Street School, started in 1873 as the first public elementary and middle school for African American children. If children wished to continue their education past this level, they had to attend high school in another community.

After the school was relocated to 35 Quarry Street in 1908, this building became known as Douglass Hall, after Frederick Douglass. It has housed a wide variety of activities since the Witherspoon Street School vacated this building in 1908. Since the early part of the century, the building has been home to a Pentecostal Church, a laundry, a movie house, a dance hall, a lodge, a social club, and was the interim meeting place for the YM-YWCA after the original Y building burned down. Now it is subdivided into apartments.