Jacob Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers' Home Façade view

NORTH CAROLINA STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE

Office of Archives and History

Department of Cultural Resources

NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

Jacob Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Kings Mountain, Cleveland County, CL1457, Listed 12/16/2014

Nomination by Davyd Foard Hood

Photographs by Claudia Brown, March 2012

Façade view

Side view with additions

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service

National Register of Historic Places

Registration Form

This form is for use in nominating or requesting determinations for individual properties and districts. See instructions in National Register Bulletin, How

to Complete the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for

"not applicable." For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the

instructions. Place additional certification comments, entries, and narrative items on continuation sheets if needed (NPS Form 10-900a).

1. Name of Property

historic name

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

other names/site number

Mauney Memorial Library, Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord House

2. Location

street & number

100 South Piedmont Avenue

N/A

not for publication

city or town

Kings Mountain

N/A

vicinity

state

North Carolina

code

county

Cleveland

code

045

zip code

28086

3. State/Federal Agency Certification

As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended,

I hereby certify that this X nomination _ request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards

for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional

requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60.

In my opinion, the property X _ meets _ does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property

be considered significant at the following level(s) of significance:

national statewide X local

Signature of certifying official/Title Date

North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government

In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register criteria.

Signature of commenting official Date

Title State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government

4. National Park Service Certification

I hereby certify that this property is:

entered in the National Register determined eligible for the National Register

determined not eligible for the National Register removed from the National Register

other (explain:) _________________

Signature of the Keeper Date of Action

United States Department of the Interior

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

5. Classification

Ownership of Property

(Check as many boxes as apply.)

Category of Property

(Check only one box.)

Number of Resources within Property

(Do not include previously listed resources in the count.)

Contributing

Noncontributing

Private

building(s)

buildings

public - Local

district

sites

public - State

site

structures

public - Federal

structure

objects

object

Total

Name of related multiple property listing

(Enter "N/A" if property is not part of a multiple property listing)

Number of contributing resources previously

listed in the National Register

N/A

6. Function or Use

Historic Functions

(Enter categories from instructions.)

Current Functions

(Enter categories from instructions.)

DOMESTIC/multiple dwelling

EDUCATION/library

7. Description

Architectural Classification

(Enter categories from instructions.)

Materials

(Enter categories from instructions.)

Other: Southern Colonial Revival

foundation:

Granite

walls:

Brick

roof:

Ceramic Tile

other:

Wood

Ceramic Tile

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

Narrative Description

(Describe the historic and current physical appearance of the property. Explain contributing and noncontributing resources

if necessary. Begin with a summary paragraph that briefly describes the general characteristics of the property, such as

its location, setting, size, and significant features.)

NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION

Setting

The Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home is an imposing Southern Colonial Revival-style

yellow-brick masonry building, which, according to both family and local tradition, was erected ca. 1923 as a

residence by Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord, placed in use in 1947 as a public library for the citizens of

Kings Mountain, and expanded by sympathetic additions in 1987-1988 and 1999-2000, that remains in use as

the city’s library to the present. (For ease of description the building will hereafter be cited as the Mauney

Memorial Library, which is the name in common usage today.) Standing at 100 South Piedmont Avenue and

facing east, the Mauney Memorial Library occupies a rectangular lot in the southwest corner of King Street

(Business US 74), along the principal east/west artery through Kings Mountain, and Piedmont Avenue, a

principal residential avenue favored in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries by the social and

financial elite, which was also lined by churches erected by the city’s five leading congregations through time.

The classical-style, tile-roof masonry filling station in the southeast corner of the intersection, erected ca. 1926

by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, recalls the period when King Street was a part of a major regional

road and heavily traveled. The Kings Mountain municipal offices were also located in the 100 block of South

Piedmont Avenue, first in a one-story frame house purchased and adapted for use as the town hall in 1923 and

next, from 1937 to 1979, in the Colonial Revival-style Kings Mountain Town Hall, which replaced it on site at

112 South Piedmont Avenue. The two-story frame house erected ca. 1911 by James F. Allison, at 108 South

Piedmont Avenue between the library and the Town Hall, was adapted for use by Harris Funeral Home in ca.

1948. In 1939 the United States Postal Service erected a Colonial Revival-style post office a block to the south,

at 100 East Mountain Street in the southeast corner of South Piedmont Avenue and Mountain Street.

The Mauney Memorial Library enjoyed this privileged setting, surrounded by historic houses, churches, and

institutional buildings, into the 1960s. In that decade two nearby historic church buildings were lost. The Boyce

Memorial Associate Reformed Presbyterian congregation abandoned their ca. 1898 Queen Anne-style brick

church in the northwest corner of King Street and Piedmont Avenue for a new suburban church in west Kings

Mountain in 1962: the church and adjoining manse were razed and replaced by the present nondescript, one-

story commercial strip mall and parking lot. A block to the south, the ca. 1924 Central Methodist Church, a

distinguished late-Romanesque Revival-style building in the northeast corner of South Piedmont Avenue and

East Mountain Street, was pulled down and replaced on site by a modern-style church in 1967. After the

construction and occupation of a new (current) city hall in 1979 at 101 West Gold Street, the 1937 building was

used by the police department and subsequently demolished and replaced by the current one-story brick-veneer

police department building. In 1987 the Kings Mountain Post Office was relocated to the newly completed post

office building at 115 East Gold Street: in 1999 the former post office became the Kings Mountain Historical

Museum.

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

With the construction of US 74-Bypass through north Kings Mountain, King Street was reduced to largely local

usage, commercial activity on the street declined, and the older filling stations that punctuated its path through

town were mostly lost or abandoned, as was the former Esso station across Piedmont Avenue in front of the

library, which has long been unused. The residential neighborhood to the north and northeast of the Mauney

Memorial Library, including a number of Mauney family residences and the Garrett-Dilling House in the

northeast corner of King Street and Piedmont Avenue, together with the former Central School, St. Matthew’s

Lutheran Church, and First Presbyterian Church, was listed as the Central School Historic District in the

National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Today the Mauney Memorial Library stands as a highly visible landmark in a center-city neighborhood of mixed

character and usage comprising buildings dating largely from the 1870s through the 1960s. The footprint of the

building occupies about one-half of the small rectangular tract in the southwest corner of King Street and

Piedmont Avenue. The remaining area comprises a landscaped setting, punctuated by an evergreen fir, and

smaller trees, including dogwoods, crape myrtles, and birches, and two paved parking areas, that complements

and enhances the library’s architectural form. The grass-covered front lawn, bisected by an axial concrete walk

linking the library with the public sidewalk parallel with South Piedmont Avenue, continues as a greensward on

the north side of the building, between it and the public sidewalk carrying along the south side of West King

Street. The mixed, mostly evergreen foundation planting on the façade continues along the library’s north

elevation where larger shrubs, including photinia, and small trees are effectively incorporated in the plantings.

The other elevations of the original building and the additions feature similar, complementing contemporary

plantings or specimen shrubs. The dominant features on the grounds are the large conifer tree standing in the

front lawn, off the southeast corner of the façade, and the Burfordi holly hedge carrying along most of the south

property line and the south edge of the asphalt-paved public parking lot in the front, southeast corner of the

library grounds that is accessible from South Piedmont Avenue. The library is also served by a narrow,

rectangular asphalt-paved staff parking lot that covers the west part of the library grounds. It is accessible from

West King Street and opens on the south into the large, adjoining paved parking lot owned by Harris Funeral

Home. A small, L-shaped yellow brick sign, with ramped faces between capped piers, is positioned in the

northeast corner of the front lawn, together with a metal flag pole. The street faces of the sign, parallel with both

West King Street and South Piedmont Avenue, feature “MAUNEY MEMORIAL LIBRARY” in metal letters.

Exterior

The Mauney Memorial Library comprises the two-story, yellow-brick Southern Colonial Revival-style house

erected as the Hord family residence in ca. 1923, a one-story block of sympathetic design, character, and

materials added in 1987-1988 on the building’s rear elevation, and the Harris Children’s Wing, a two-level

addition of 1999-2000 that is positioned on the south side of the earlier addition and west of the south elevation

of the Hord residence, which remains visible. While an institutional building, and one which has been

essentially doubled in plan by its additions, the Mauney Memorial Library retains a strong domestic appearance

that is reinforced by the design, materials, and integrity of the house, the appealing combination of yellow brick,

white classical detailing, and its green Ludowici-Celadon ceramic-tile roof, and the monumental character of its

two-story portico and complementing porches. In the design of the two additions, the Shelby-based firm of

Holland and Hamrick Architects/Holland Hamrick & Patterson Architects, P.A., with Roger Holland as the lead

architect in both instances, respected the character of the Hord residence: they replicated the use of yellow brick

for the elevations and white classical architectural finish, while bowing to the use of lower-cost asphalt shingles

for the roofing, and produced a building of remarkable unity. To facilitate the description of the building a three-

sheet set of plans for the basement, first-story, and second-story levels of the library, prepared as part of a

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

facility study in 2005 by Talley & Smith Architecture Incorporated, a Shelby-based firm, are included as figures

one, two, and three, respectively. The three sequential parts of the library are noted on the first-story plan (figure

two) for reference, and the description of the building will follow that format.

The former Hord residence, the principal block of the Mauney Memorial Library, is an imposing building

defined by an insistent symmetry, high-quality materials, consistent architectural detailing, good craftsmanship,

and a high degree of integrity for a residential building adapted for institutional use. An unusually discerning

degree of learned stewardship on the part of successive librarians has been a critical factor in this regard. The

principal part of the Hord residence stands on a granite masonry foundation that is highly finished with raised

joints under the front half of the building and the terrace that spans the façade. The foundation of the southwest

corner of the building incorporating the hatch entrance to the partial basement is yellow brick, laid up in

common bond. The foundation is capped by a simply-shaped, high-quality cast-stone (or limestone) water table

that encircles the ca. 1923 building and serves as the base for the elevations of yellow brick with gray mortar

that are laid in common bond. The window openings contain original nine-over-one wood sash in molded inset

frames and have cast stone/limestone sills. The first-story openings have brick flat-arch lintels with cast

stone/limestone keystones. The second-story window openings are positioned immediately under the full

classical, white-painted wood entablature with developed architrave, frieze and cornice courses. The molded

cornice incorporates concealed guttering that is drained by painted metal downspouts. The roof of the former

Hord residence is covered with a green Ludowici-Celadon tile roof with acroteria above the pedimented gable

ends and atop the principal ridge line. Only one of the house’s original four, symmetrically positioned interior-

end and interior chimneys remains visible above the roofline, its stack rising high above the roof and finished

with a corbelled cap. The building’s north and south porches are covered with standing-seam copper installed in

2014.

The five-bay, east-facing façade of the former Hord residence is symmetrical in design and appearance except

for the treatment of the flanking, one-story north and south porches. It is fronted by an expansive open terrace,

resting on a granite ashlar base and paved with multi-tone ochre broken tiles, which incorporates a centered

flight of stone steps with ramped sides that descends to ground level. The front northeast and southeast corners

of the terrace are rounded and wrap to the west to join the side porches. Both porches are supported by paired

Tuscan columns. The south porch, originally glazed as a sun porch, is now mostly enclosed with sheathing (for

office use), finished with decorative symmetrical battens, and is no longer accessible from the terrace. A

double-leaf, three-pane casement window survives on the sun porch’s west elevation. The north porch,

originally an open-air sitting porch, remains as built with paired Tuscan wooden columns and a herringbone-

pattern brick floor inside a soldier course frame. The dominant feature of the façade is the two-story,

pedimented tetrastyle portico with stucco-finished masonry columns. The columns have round bases on square

plinths and simple round caps. They are matched by four corresponding brick pilasters rising on the face of the

elevation and linked with the pilasters by molded beams, which define the porch’s three-part sheathed tray

ceiling. The pediment enjoys a full classical finish and has weatherboard sheathing and a centered demi-lune

attic window. “JACOB S. MAUNEY MEMORIAL LIBRARY,” in metal letters, appears on a horizontal metal

panel centered in the architrave above the columns.

The first-story entrance employs classical detailing and a pair of attenuated columns to enframe the molded-

panel door and its flanking leaded-beveled-glass side lights and arched transom. The sidelights rest on blind

molded panels. The transom is enframed by a flush, three-course header brick surround centered by a shaped

cast stone/limestone keystone. A shallow projecting ornamental balcony effectively links the first- and second-

story center-bay treatments. Handsomely molded brackets support the balcony which, in turn, is protected by a

classical, turned-member railing with urn-shaped newel caps atop square corner posts. The second-story center

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

bay is fitted with a three-part window comprising a nine-over-one sash window flanked by narrow three-over-

one sidelights. The façade’s other eight first-and-second-story window openings contain nine-over-one sash.

As the plans (figures two and three) indicate, the design and appearance of the original north and south

elevations of the former Hord residence are very similar: both have a three-part, four-bay arrangement. The

principal differences are the form and depth of the pendant projecting, pedimented gable-end bays and the fact

that the second-story of the south elevation is one bay shorter than its first story, whose length is essentially the

same as that of the house’s north elevation. On the north elevation the sitting porch occupies the east, first-story

part of the three wall planes, while paired windows on the second story flank an interior-end chimney, which

was taken down to the roof level and covered over in 2014. The pedimented, gable-end bay comprising the

middle part of the elevation projects well forward of the mass of the house to provide space for a door on its east

side that originally opened from the sitting porch into the family sitting room. A large three-part opening on its

first story has paired six-over-one sash flanking a single nine-over-one sash window. On the second story,

paired windows occupy a smaller, centered opening. A small demi-lune attic window is centered in the sheathed

pediment of the gable end. The wider, west part of the north elevation has a two-bay arrangement on each level

with a single window opening on the east and larger openings holding paired sash windows on the west that,

respectively, illuminated a bathroom and bedroom on both levels.

On the south elevation, the originally glazed, now sheathed sun porch, occupies the east part of the elevation

and a pair of single windows flank the interior-end chimney on the second level, as on the north elevation. This

chimney, like the pendant north chimney, was taken down to roof level and covered over with matching roof

tiles in 2014. The fenestration of the projecting bay repeats that seen on the north elevation; however, its

southeast and southwest corners have a two-stage projection that gives its added presence. The large first-story

window illuminated the Hords’ formal dining room. The west part of this elevation has a two-bay division on

the first story with paired windows in the east opening and a single window to the west that, respectively,

illuminated the Hord family’s private dining room and kitchen. On the second story, a single window is centered

above the paired windows.

Documentary photographs, taken during the 1979 architectural survey of Kings Mountain and a later group

dating from construction of the 1987-1988 addition, provide evidence of the appearance of the house’s west

elevation that actually comprised two ells of different depths flanking a recess in the area west of the interior

stair hall. The paired windows illuminating the interior stair are visible between the ells. The north ell is covered

by a hip roof while the south ell has a pedimented, gable-end roof. A full-depth, one-story service porch

occupied the area between the ells. An enclosed service stair rose from a door in the east end of the porch in a

single flight to a door that opened on the north side of the interior stair landing. Both the porch and the stair

were removed. The first-story west elevations of both ells were altered and concealed in the 1987-1988 addition.

However, a photograph does show the west elevation of the Hord family’s kitchen at the west end of the south

ell: a small brick chimney, flanked by windows, contained a flue for the cook stove. A door in the kitchen’s

north elevation opened onto the service porch. An opening with paired windows is centered on the second story

of the north ell while a single off-center window appears in the upper wall of the south ell. A demi-lune window

is positioned in the sheathed pediment at the attic level.

The design of the one-story addition of 1987-1988, erected on the west, rear elevation of the existing ca. 1923

house and covered with a hip, asphalt-shingle roof, respected the materials, proportions, and domestic character

of the former Hord residence. The elevations are laid in common-bond yellow brick, with a cast-stone water-

table and window sills, and rise to a molded wood entablature with a dentil course and deep eaves. In plan its

north and south elevations are aligned with those of the earlier building except for an inset and an offset on the

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

north which provide variety and mitigate the mass of the addition visible to passersby on West King Street. On

the south a small ell, which survives today as a hyphen-like link to the Harris Family Children’s Wing of 1999-

2000, comprised an inset, southeast-corner porch and vestibule, with adjoining lavatories for both sexes, that

provides a secondary access to the library and its new auditorium.

The north elevation of the addition has a general three-part, multiple bay arrangement. A single six-over-one

sash window is centered in the east bay, which is recessed between the earlier building on the east and the

prominent center part of the addition on the west that has a large opening holding paired six-over-one sash. The

offset, two-bay west part of the addition is partially fronted by a shallow classically-detailed porch that shelters

entrances into the Carolina Room on the east and the staff break room on the south. A small window opening is

positioned near the west end of the elevation. The west elevation of the addition is blind, as is the visible part of

its south elevation. Landscape plantings complement these elevations.

The south ell has a blind west elevation and a two-bay east elevation. When the Harris Family Children’s Wing

was added, the existing inset, southeast-corner porch was enclosed as an entry and a small classically-detailed

porch was built on its east side. A metal wheelchair lift is positioned on the north side of the porch. A single six-

over-one sash window occupies the north bay of the ell’s east elevation.

In the design of the Harris Family Children’s wing, the Shelby-based architectural firm again deferred to the

style, materials, finish, and proportions of the original Hord residence. Its common-bond yellow brick elevations

incorporate a cast-stone water-table and window sills and rise to a molded wood entablature with a dentil course

and deep eaves. In effect it is positioned and treated as a pendant to the earlier, smaller addition and also is

covered with an asphalt-shingle hip roof. The Harris Family Children’s Wing is a rectangular-shaped block with

shallow projecting bays of different widths, both containing three-part windows, on its south and east

elevations. During the 1999-2000 building project, the 1987-1988 ell was enlarged by some three feet on the

south, fitted with a new porch in front of the now-enclosed former inset corner porch, and flanked on the west

by paired exterior, brick and concrete staircases, with metal railings, that are secondary (emergency) exits from

the main level down to grade and from the basement level up to grade. These doorways are fitted with metal,

partially glazed doors with a narrow sidelight.

The north and west elevations of the Harris Family Children’s Wing are blind at the basement level and each

has two single windows of different sizes with eight-over-one snap-in muntins in generally symmetrical

positions on the main level. The wide south elevation is the most developed part of its exterior design and has a

dominant, two-level projecting bay that has centered three-part windows on each level. The larger center

opening is fitted with a single pane while the separate flanking openings hold one-over-one sash. On the first-

story level the upper halves of the flanking sash are fitted with twelve-part, snap-in muntins. At the basement

level a one-story classically-detailed hip-roof porch with Tuscan columns adjoins the west end of the projecting

bay: it protects the entrance to the basement-level community room featuring a single glazed and paneled metal

door flanked on the west by a single-pane sidelight and the two surmounted by a single-pane transom. The east,

front elevation of the Harris Family Children’s Wing has a two-part arrangement with the projecting bay

occupying its south half. The basement level is blind. Its first-story three-part fenestration repeats the pattern

seen on the south elevation. The north half of the elevation has single twelve-over-one sash window position to

the south and “HARRIS CHILDREN’S WING” in metal block letters centered on the wall between the window

and the porch.

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

Interior: Overview

While the three-stage architectural development (ca. 1923, 1987-1988, and 1999-2000) of the Mauney

Memorial Library is clearly evident on the exterior, as is the integrity of the sequential stages, the interior plan,

fabric, finishes, and appearance reflect a more complicated history of the building’s use as a private residence, a

teacherage, and a public library over the course of some ninety-one years. Architectural evidence indicates that

the plan and finish of the Hord residence remained essentially intact from ca. 1923 until 1947 when certain

small-scale changes were effected with its adaptation for use as a public library and teachers’ home.

Photographs published in the presentation booklet indicate these occurred mainly in setting apart and outfitting

the front parlors and entrance hall of the house for library use. The mantel in the north parlor was removed and

the walls lined with built-in bookcases and it became the “Adult Reading Room.” The south parlor, whose

original finish appears to have been like that of its pendant on the north side of the hall except possibly for the

design of its mantel, became the “Children’s Room.” The brick mantel, with a corbelled shelf, remained in

place and shelving was installed on either side of the chimney breast, covering the entrances to the sun porch.

The paired, glazed French doors which probably graced the openings from the hall into the parlors were

removed then as they were eventually in all of the first-story reception rooms. The principal change occurred in

the house’s center hall, where the foot of the stair was reoriented and the area below a handsomely-molded

elliptical arch, which separated the front, entrance area (between the parlors) from the rear stair hall, was infilled

with a partition wall. The lower steps were taken up, turned ninety-degrees, and descended to the north: a

landing was added to ease the transition and like their rise to that of the original flight. The Hords’ formal dining

room appears to have been reserved as an office and/or work space for the library operations. The Hord family’s

sitting room, immediately west of the north parlor and with a door onto the north porch, became the teachers’

living room: the Colonial Revival-style mantel and fireplace/coal grate on its west wall was retained in place.

The Hord family’s private dining room became the teachers’ dining room, and the kitchen to the west of the

dining room was probably also retained as the teachers’ kitchen. The second-story center-hall, triple-pile plan

and finishes appear to have remained intact and remain essentially to the present. The date of the infill walls

below arches framing the openings from the second-story landing into the front, east part of the hall, probably

used by the Hords as an upstairs sitting room as it is known to have been used by the teachers, and those into

secondary side halls providing access to the center and west bedrooms is unconfirmed. However, it probably

dates to 1987-1988.

The nature, extent, and precise sequence of adaptations made to the interior from the late 1950s/early 1960s

through the 1970s, when the building ceased to be used as a teacherage, saw some temporary usage as rental

apartments, the library expanded its operations and programs throughout the first story, and the second-story

rooms were put into use, are uncertain. They appear to have been minimal except for the removal of the 1947

partition wall that divided the first-story entrance hall and the return of the stair to its original configuration.

Some adjustment to the former Hord residence came in 1987-1988 when the library was expanded, and the use

of existing spaces for reading rooms, stacks, and program activities was reconsidered in the context of the added

space and facilities. The construction of the Harris Family Children’s Wing in 1999-2000, providing a spacious

new area for the children’s library and programs and a new meeting room, also prompted further adjustments to

the use and function of areas in the existing library. Among these were the removal of the stage in the Weir

memorial auditorium and the installation of stacks for the non-fiction collection in the large space. The

increasing provision of computers and associated technology for patron use has also prompted certain changes

in spatial usage on the first story of the library, while the six former bedrooms on the second story have seen

little change or modification for increased use as office space and for storage.

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

Interior: Description

Note: The description of the interior of the Mauney Memorial Library follows the format of the

exterior description.

The former Hord residence, adapted for use as a library and teachers’ home in 1947, retains its essential plan

and many of the features of its original interior decoration on the first story and a remarkable integrity of plan,

fabric, and finish on the second story. The first story of the former Hord residence has spacious center-hall plan

with flanking, paired equal-sized rooms in its front double-tier reception area. (See figure two.) The former

north and south parlors, at the front of the house, are adjoined on the west, respectively, by the former family

sitting room and formal dining room. The pair of smaller rooms behind the formal dining room in the south ell

reflect the historic arrangement of the family’s private dining room and a kitchen. The partition walls forming a

first-story bedroom and bathroom in the north ell are lost: the adjoining walk-in closet survives, partitioned as

small men’s and women’s lavatories. Here the original west wall of the residence’s north ell is lost and the

present large stack room incorporates areas of the original house and the 1987-1988 addition. For efficiency and

security most of the house’s interior, partition-wall doors have been taken down and the reveals either re-

sheathed or the voids, left when hinges and locks were removed, filled in. The original oak flooring has been

covered with commercial grade, low-pile carpet except the entrance hall and cross passage where black and

white manufactured tile is laid in a decorative pattern. The plaster walls are painted. The original ceilings are

concealed by a suspended ceiling of metal and acoustical tiles.

The library’s entrance hall and its flanking front rooms were originally en suite with a consistent architectural

finish. Significant portions of the tall paneled wainscot, which rises from a molded baseboard to a molded chair

rail, survive in the hall and the flanking rooms, on the north face of the enclosed stair, and along the wall with

the rise of the stair to the second story. The wall area below the windows in these rooms is also paneled in

complementing fashion. The front door, the doorways opening from the hall into the front rooms, and, those, in

turn opening into the sun porch and the rooms to the west are fitted with richly-molded three-part Colonial

Revival-style architraves, which recur around the doors and windows throughout the first and second stories.

Both rooms and the hall are fitted with book shelving. Paired free-standing wood-paneled check-out stations are

located in the south room where a portrait of Jacob Simri and Margaret Juletta Rudisill Mauney hangs on the

chimney breast in the south wall, above a relocated section of wainscoting and between the doorways onto the

sun porch. The sun porch has open shelving, cupboards, a counter, and a wall-hung sink in the southwest corner

that reflect its use as office and work space through time. Although most of the glazing has been covered with

plywood and decorative battens, or lost, a double-leaf, three-pane casement window survives in the west wall.

An shaped elliptical arch, replicating the form of the fanlight over the front entrance, distinguishes the front

entrance area of the hall from the area to the west where the stair is located. Here the stair rises to the west along

the south wall to a landing and then a second flight of steps rises along the north wall to the second story. The

wall along the rise of the stair and the landing is sheathed with paneled wainscoting. A break in the wainscoting

at the north end of the landing indicates the position of a door that opened onto the enclosed service stair

descending to the service porch. The handsome turned-member railing is carried by a pine handrail from a

paneled, capped, and acorn-topped newel at the foot of the stair to plain, capped newels on the landing and

second story. The treads are oak.

The area under the initial flight, on the south, is enclosed, to conceal the basement stair under it, and fitted with

wainscoting. A doorway at the west end of the hall opens into a perpendicular passage, which has shelving in an

arch-headed recess on its west wall, door openings at its north and south ends, and a single-panel door on the

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east wall that opens onto the basement stair. The doorways at the north and south ends of the passage are fitted

with Dutch doors with single panels in the lower half and six panes in the glazed upper half. The lower halves of

each door are surmounted by a flat shelf. While the glazed and paneled design of the doors is likely original,

their adaptation as Dutch doors and the addition of the shelves surely dates to the period when the check-out

desk and service area was located in the stair hall and passage, and the narrow shelves functioned as service

counters when the lower halves of the doors were closed. A window-like opening in the north wall of the stair

hall probably dates from this period as well.

The former sitting and formal dining rooms retain their molded baseboards and door and window surrounds and

are fitted with bookcases built against their walls. The mantels in both rooms are lost and the fireboxes covered

with wallboard. In the Hord family’s private dining room, adjoining the formal dining room on the west, a

simple arch-headed opening in the north elevation opens to an alcove, which is fitted with full-width open

shelving above cupboards on its east and west walls and was probably a china pantry. Small, single-use

lavatories for men and women are positioned on axis with the above-described cross passage and on the west

side of the partition wall forming the west elevation of the former sitting room. Both have two-panel doors.

They are located in a former, original walk-in closet that was partitioned for this new use. The original closet

door opening now serves the men’s lavatory.

The well-considered design of the Hord family’s private living quarters, now comprising the second story of the

Mauney Memorial Library, provided six bedrooms, one bathroom, and closets aligned in two tiers flanking the

center hall. (See figure three.) The front bedrooms, above the family’s north and south parlors, are same-sized

and larger than the other four and both have paired, adjoining closets. Reflecting certain variances from the first-

story plan, the center and back bedrooms vary slightly in size and each has one closet, except for the back,

northwest corner bedroom that has no closet and was likely a guest room. The second-story remains essentially

as built except for the sheathed over fireboxes/coal grates in the front and center bedrooms (and the removal of

complementing mantels), the loss of the entire finish, fittings, and fixtures in the original bathroom in the north

tier (resulting from plumbing leaks), and the loss or replacement of fixtures in the paired, back-to-back

bathrooms added in 1947 in the south tier. Surviving ceramic-tile wainscot in the southernmost of the south-tier

bathrooms, connecting with both the front, southeast corner and center bedrooms, and the black-trimmed white

tilework gracing the tub alcove and wainscot in the bathroom opening off the sitting room probably dates to the

1947 refitting for the teacherage.

The stair originally rose to the second story and opened under a broad simple arch directly into the spacious

second-story sitting hall. Like arched openings to the north and south gave onto secondary halls providing

access to the center and back bedrooms. Over time these openings have been infilled with walls fitted with

doors, and the stair now rises to a shallow landing. A door in the east wall opens into the former hall sitting

room while doors at the north and south ends of the landing open into the respective secondary halls. The finish

of the sitting hall, secondary halls, and bedrooms replicates that seen on the first story and includes molded

baseboards, richly molded window and door surrounds, dark-stained two-panel doors with either molded glass,

brass, or metal knobs, and simple cornice moldings. One or both sides of some doors are now painted. The

elevations of the hall(s) are treated with a symmetrically-molded chair rail. The flooring is oak and covered in

some areas with commercial carpet. The original plaster walls and later wallboard infill is painted. The rooms

retain their original, visible plaster ceilings except in the former sitting room which has a suspended acoustical-

tile ceiling in a metal frame.

Now-yellowed, typed paper notices on the inside faces of the hall doors in four bedrooms--the front, northeast

corner and north center bedrooms, the south center and rear, southwest corner bedrooms--survive from the

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period when these rooms were occupied by teachers. They indicate the rates for the beds in the respective

rooms. The front, northeast corner and north center bedrooms, identified as rooms 2 and 3, respectively, had the

same rates and information: “3 TWIN BEDS $12.50 EACH.” The rear, southwest corner bedroom contains yet

another reminder of the building’s past history, but whether it dates to 1947 or later apartment use is

unconfirmed. A white-enamel-on-steel efficiency kitchen unit, labeled “Dwyer” and incorporating a sink,

refrigerator, cooking burners, and an oven, stands in the room’s southwest corner. On the wall above it is a four-

door wall-hung cabinet unit of the same materials and bearing a manufacturer’s label for the “Dwyer Products

Corporation” of Michigan City, Indiana. It incorporates a light to illuminate work occurring below. The front

bedrooms are now used as offices for library personnel, including the library director whose office is in the

front, northeast corner room. The other four former bedrooms are used as work space and for storage.

The door in the east wall of the cross passage under the stair landing opens onto a flight of wood steps that

descends to the east to the partial basement in the former Hord residence. It has a poured concrete floor and

exposed brick walls that are painted in some areas. A passage aligned beside the stair on an east/west axis

provides access to the boiler/furnace room, coal room, and utility room aligned, east to west, on its south side

and a small storage room on the north side. The utility room, in the southwest corner of the basement, originally

had access to the exterior through a door in its west wall. When the 1987-1988 addition was built and covered it,

an existing basement window in the south foundation wall was enlarged for human access and fitted with a

hatch door. The utility room was used for domestic purposes including laundering of clothing and linens: a cast

iron pot in a brick well survives here.

The interior plan and finish of the 1987-1988 addition to the Mauney Memorial Library, on the west side of the

former Hord residence, remains as completed except in one instance, where simple changes occurred during the

1999-2000 expansion of the library. With the completion of the basement-level community meeting room, the

Weir memorial auditorium was adapted for use as a non-fiction stack room: the shallow, elevated stage across

its west end was removed, the large rectangular room was fitted with free-standing shelving, and a study

counter, enhanced with pendant lighting, and stool seating, was installed along the east elevation of the room.

The finish of the auditorium, the Carolina Room, the adjoining office, and the large stack room for fiction that

incorporated a part of the former house is consistent. It includes commercial carpet on the floors, painted

wallboard walls, molded baseboards, suspended acoustical-tile ceilings in metal frames, and molded door

surrounds that replicate those in the former residence and hold either two-panel interior doors or six-panel

exterior doors. The upper half of the office door is glazed and the emergency door opening from the Carolina

Room and another from the staff break room onto the northwest-corner porch are fitted with a four-pane

transom. The wall and ceiling finish in the staff break room and adjoining utility room is the same, but the floors

are covered with manufactured tile.

The 1987-1988 finish of the men’s and women’s lavatories in the south ell is identical and includes a decorative

ceramic tile floor featuring blue, black, and tan tiles laid in an off-white field, painted wallboard walls, and

suspended ceilings. In the women’s lavatory two cubicles of a formica-like material provide privacy and enclose

two commodes. It has a wall-hung sink. The men’s lavatory also features a wall-hung sink, cubicles of the same

material, one commode, and one urinal.

The design and construction of the Harris Family Children’s Wing in 1999-2000 satisfied two important needs

of the Mauney Memorial Library: the provision of a large discreet space for the children’s collections,

activities, and programs, as well as office and work space for the children’s librarian(s), and a meeting space

with related facilities for meetings, workshops, reading camps, and other events that utilized both interior and

exterior access. The first was accomplished on the main level and the latter in the basement, which enjoyed

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ground level public entrance on the south. Access between the two and the library’s parking lots was provided

by an expansion and remodeling of the south ell to provide a larger, more convenient three-chamber entrance,

paired exterior staircases on the south side of the expanded ell, and a closed interior stair in the southwest corner

of the Harris addition that provided direct access between the two levels. A metal tablet identifying the addition

as the Harris Family Children’s Wing and listing its donors is mounted on the north wall of the entrance

chamber just inside the porch.

While the floor of the new three-chamber entrance is covered by rubber tile with multi-color squares in a white

ground that complements the ceramic tile in the lavatories, the finish of the principal spaces in the Harris Family

Children’s Wing repeated that of the 1987-1988 addition. The floors are covered with commercial carpet, except

in utility areas, the kitchen, and the like where manufactured /rubber tile is preferable, the walls are painted

wallboard or structural materials such as concrete block in the corner stairwell, and the ceilings are of suspended

acoustical tile in metal framing. The molded woodwork here, like that in the earlier addition, replicates that in

the former Hord residence. The doors have a six-panel arrangement. Doorways in the expanded entrance are

enhanced with four-pane transoms.

The children’s reading room, with tables, chairs, and book stacks, occupies most of the main level of the wing.

The built-in service desk with its arched, convex front is located on the room’s north wall just inside and west of

the entrance. It is flanked on the west by the librarian’s office that, in turn, adjoins the workroom in the

northwest corner of the wing. A staff lavatory, accessible from the workroom is flanked on the south by the

children’s unisex lavatory. Both are furnished with commodes and sinks with ceramic tile floors and wainscots.

A door in the southwest corner of the room opens onto the stairwell and its metal stair with rubber treads linking

the levels.

The plan of the basement level essentially replicates that of the main level. The community/meeting room

occupies most of the floor plan with the entrance, a large storage closet for tables and chairs, men’s and

women’s lavatories, the kitchen, a hall leading to the exterior stair on the west side of the ell/hyphen, and utility

rooms arranged in an L-shaped series along the room’s west and north elevations. The finishes in these areas are

typical of the period of construction. The lavatories have tan ceramic tile floors and wainscots and single sinks

in a formica-finished counter. Stalls of the small formica enclose two commodes in the women’s lavatory and a

commode and urinal in the men’s lavatory. The rectangular, fully-equipped kitchen has a rubber-tile floor,

extensive counters and cabinet space, appliances, a stainless steel double-well sink, and dishwasher.

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8. Statement of Significance

Applicable National Register Criteria

(Mark "x" in one or more boxes for the criteria qualifying the property

for National Register listing.)

Property is associated with events that have made a

significant contribution to the broad patterns of our

history.

Property is associated with the lives of persons

significant in our past.

Property embodies the distinctive characteristics

of a type, period, or method of construction or

represents the work of a master, or possesses high

artistic values, or represents a significant

and distinguishable entity whose components lack

individual distinction.

Property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information

important in prehistory or history.

Criteria Considerations

(Mark "x" in all the boxes that apply.)

Property is:

Owned by a religious institution or used for religious

purposes.

removed from its original location.

a birthplace or grave.

a cemetery.

a reconstructed building, object, or structure.

a commemorative property.

less than 50 years old or achieving significance

within the past 50 years.

Areas of Significance

(Enter categories from instructions.)

Education

Social History

Period of Significance

1947-1964

Significant Dates

1947

Significant Person

(Complete only if Criterion B is marked above.)

N/A

Cultural Affiliation

N/A

Architect/Builder

unknown

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Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph (Provide a summary paragraph that includes level of significance and

applicable criteria.)

Summary

The Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home, an imposing Southern Colonial Revival-style

building standing at 100 South Piedmont Avenue in Kings Mountain, has been a landmark in the townscape

since its construction as the Hord family residence in ca. 1923 and its refitting as a public library and teachers’

home in 1947. Although the building’s use as a public library has long been recognized, its critical role as a

teacherage in Kings Mountain’s educational history, from 1947 to ca. 1962-1963, is less well-known. With

sympathetic additions made in 1987-1988 and 1999-2000, the building continues to serve the citizens of Kings

Mountain as a public library. Today, the Mauney Memorial Library, as it has long been identified in the

community, is one of three public library facilities in Cleveland County and the oldest such building that has

enjoyed continuous use as a library surviving in the county. The Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and

Teachers’ Home holds local significance in the areas of social history and education and satisfies National

Mountain as a memorial to Jacob Simri and Margaret Juletta Rudisill Mauney by their children, and extends to

1964. The period of significance, ending in 1964 and honoring the fifty-year criterion, comprises the years in

which the library gained important stature as a public institution and the entire period, from 1947 to ca. 1962-

1963, when the building functioned as a teacherage for the Kings Mountain school system.

Founded in 1874, Kings Mountain prospered as its important textile-based economy greatly expanded in the

decades following the organization of the Kings Mountain Manufacturing Company in 1888. Jacob Simri

Mauney (1846-1936) and William Andrew Mauney (1841-1928), his older brother, were critical figures in these

enterprises and nearly every aspect of the commercial and civic life of Kings Mountain. The movement to

establish a public library in Kings Mountain owes to the efforts of Haywood Eugene Lynch (1909-1983), a

native of Wayne County, North Carolina, and a graduate of Duke University, who came to Kings Mountain in

1934 and became editor and owner of the Kings Mountain Herald, a weekly newspaper, in 1935. On 7 February

1935 he published his first editorial on the subject, “A City Public Library,” and thereafter championed the

cause of a public library in a series of editorials and news articles that galvanized local interest and support.

Success came on 15 February 1937, when the library opened with 500 volumes in temporary quarters in the

Webb building on Cherokee Street, which housed the town’s municipal offices while a new town hall was being

erected. The Kings Mountain Public Library formally opened in its first permanent space, in the basement of the

Kings Mountain Town Hall, on 15 October 1937.

The press for larger, better premises, which increased with both the book collection and patronage during World

War II, was answered on 3 October 1946, when the Kings Mountain Herald carried a full-width headline,

“Mauney Family Purchases Hord Home For Memorial Library.” Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord (1863-

1930), a wealthy real estate investor, had built the house as a family residence, which had remained the home of

his widow, Carrie White Hord (1877-1940), and their unmarried daughters. Thirteen months later, on 5

November 1947, the Mauney family presented the Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home to

the City of Kings Mountain in a well-attended public ceremony. The library occupied the entrance hall and two

front parlors of the former Hord residence: rental living quarters for teachers were located in the remainder of

the house’s first and second stories. In time, as anticipated in the deed of conveyance, the library expanded into

other rooms on the first story with library offices on the second story, after the building’s use as a teacherage

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ended. Further expansion of library services and its collections were accommodated in the two expansions of

1987-1988 and 1999-2000 which produced the present library facility.

Through its use as a public library and teacherage, the Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

occupies an important place in the social and educational history of Kings Mountain and reflects the efforts of

its citizens and government alike to undertake and maintain facilities for the welfare and betterment of its

residents. In this particular instance the critical role of a library in the education of a citizenry is matched by the

setting apart in 1947 of a principal portion of the former Hord residence as a teacherage where mostly young,

unmarried teachers in the city’s public school system found very agreeable living quarters.

Historical Background

The genesis of the movement for a public library in Kings Mountain, the second such municipal library in

Cleveland County, which has been known as the Mauney Memorial Library and located in its present location

since 1947, lies in the efforts of Haywood Eugene Lunch (1909-1983). Mr. Lynch, a native of Goldsboro,

Wayne County, North Carolina, a graduate of Duke University, and a journalist formerly on the staff of the

Goldsboro News-Argus, came to Kings Mountain in 1934. In that year he executed a lease arrangement for the

operation of the Kings Mountain Herald, the town’s weekly newspaper, with Guilford Garfield Page (1883-

1949), its long-time owner and former editor. Haywood Lynch oversaw publication of the first issue of the

newspaper as its editor on 17 January 1935. Six months later, on 18 July 1935, the sale of the Kings Mountain

Herald to Mr. Lynch was announced on its front page under the headline, “Lynch Buys The Herald.” In the

article’s opening paragraph Mr. Page acknowledged “Mr. Lynch expected from the first to buy the paper and

business if after trying it out he liked the town and the prospects. He has been more than pleased with the fine

patronage the people have given him and the royal reception he and his family have received from the people.”

During the decade he owned and edited the newspaper, Haywood Lynch utilized his role as editor of the Kings

Mountain Herald to encourage every effort for civic, social, and commercial improvement in Kings Mountain.

This advocacy was especially important in the 1930s when he urged town leaders to seek and provide the

necessary matching support for a series of projects funded through several Federal works programs including a

new town hall, a high school gymnasium, a new post office, and important improvements to the transportation

infrastructure.

Haywood Lynch had a well-placed colleague in the person of Josephine Ellerbe Weir (1899-1995), the wife of

William Theodore Weir (1901-1978), a Kings Mountain grocer. Mrs. Weir came to Kings Mountain in about

1921 as Josephine Ellerbe to teach English at Central School, Kings Mountain’s high school. After one year she

relocated to Red Springs, North Carolina, and joined the English faculty at Flora McDonald College. After three

years she returned to Kings Mountain and taught for a year at East Elementary School before returning to

Central School. In the early 1920s the Kings Mountain high school did not have a library: by her return in about

1926, a room is said to have been designated for library use. Mrs. Weir had charge of the fledgling library,

ordered books, and opened it for research and study when not in the classroom. In 1938, after Central School

was rebuilt to replace the earlier building that was lost to fire in 1932, Josephine Weir became its full-time

librarian and held that position until retiring from the local school system in 1968. Mrs. Weir’s efforts in the

1920s and 1930s to provide study and library facilities for high school students in Kings Mountain nurtured

their study and reading habits. They also instilled a life-long respect for reading and research in many of her

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students who, along with other residents of Kings Mountain, supported Haywood Lynch’s call for a public

library in 1935 and 1936.

Mr. Lynch first exercised his advocacy in an editorial, “A City Public Library,” published in the Kings Mountain

Herald on 7 February 1935.

We would like to see in our town a public library. A place where readers of all ages may get

reading material of the better kinds. Maybe some of the patriotic citizens would like to donate

some books that they now have.

A library could be started on a very small scale and gradually built up. New volumes could be

added from time to time. The biggest cost would be the salary of the librarian, which could be

part time work at first.

Write to us and give us your ideas along this line of thought. The Herald would like to be the first

to make a donation to Kings Mountain Public Library.

Two weeks later, on 21 February 1935, he published a second editorial, “More About Public Library.”

Some weeks ago the Herald carried an editorial about a public library for the town of Kings

Mountain. The reaction on the part of the public has been gratifying. Numbers of people have

expressed the opinion that they would like to have some place where they could get books and go

to read. The Herald would like to see some active group of people or organization get together

and formulate definite plans for this public enterprise. A small library could be started at

relatively small cost. There is no better way to spend leisure time than reading some good book

or current magazine. Under the NRA and New Deal we have had more leisure time thrust upon

us than ever before in the history of this country. Our working people have approximately one

third of their time to spend at leisure. Of course not every one likes to read but it is a habit that is

easily acquired and very beneficial. Your editor would be glad to meet with any committee or

group that is interested in starting this worthy project. There are many ways by which a public

library could be financed (and) endowed.

His next editorial, “Room For Library,” published on 11 July 1935, reflected the ongoing efforts of city leaders

to secure federal public-works funding to construct a new city hall for Kings Mountain.

We notice by our favorite paper that Kings Mountain is going to erect a new city hall building.

We would like to urge, and have our many readers, to urge the city fathers to include a room in

this new building for our city library.

Because sooner or later Kings Mountain is going to be able to boast of a city library, so now is

the time to make plans where it shall be housed.

In another editorial, “Our Town Library,” published on 3 October 1935, Mr. Lynch called on town residents to

provide financial support for a library. Months passed, with apparently little movement, until Haywood Lynch

penned another editorial, “A Reminder,” that was published on 2 January 1936.

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The Editor of the Herald has not forgotten the need of a Library in the Best Town In The State.

We have been writing for almost a year now about a library for Kings Mountain. Lots of people

have stopped us to remark that they are wholeheartedly in favor of a library for Kings Mountain.

We need the LIBRARY. The people want a LIBRARY. There is no reason why we should not

have a Library.

The Herald will offer next week a plan whereby Kings Mountain can have a Library without a

great cost to anyone. Watch for it.

The “Plan For A Library For Kings Mountain,” was published on the front page of the Kings Mountain Herald

on 9 January 1936. In carefully developed language Mr. Lynch called for one out of every 100 of King’s

Mountain’s 8,000 citizens to contribute $5 each to raise $400 for books, shelving, and equipment. He proposed

housing the library in a room in the town hall on Piedmont Street recently vacated by Mrs. Mae Hamrick, who

was in charge of federally-funded local relief work. He next called on the city government to provide funding to

employ a librarian. “The plan outlined above” he noted, “will not give Kings Mountain a big, elaborate Public

Library, but it will be a start.” He then offered the offices of the Herald as a collection agency for donations.

Under the headline “Public Library Meeting Held” the Kings Mountain Herald informed its readers on 19

March 1936 of a meeting of representatives of local civic and professional groups on 16 March at which Mr.

Lynch was elected general chairman and a series of four resolutions in support of a public library were adopted.

Among those present, representing the Junior Woman’s Club, was Mrs. Samuel Aubrey (Katharine Shenk)

Mauney, the wife of the eldest son of Jacob Augustus Mauney (1874-1952) who, in turn, was the eldest son of

Jacob Simri Mauney.

Articles in the Kings Mountain Herald published through the spring and early summer of

1936 reported gifts to the library and a gathering momentum. These culminated in two important articles

published in July 1936, both under front-page headlines. The first, appearing on 2 July under “Town

Appropriates Funds For Library,” announced the decision by the Town Council to appropriate “$25 per month

for the maintenance of a public library here providing the citizens of Kings Mountain would raise the necessary

funds to start the library.” The second article appeared on 16 July under the headline “Location For Public

Library Secured.”

Day by day the assurance that Kings Mountain will have a Public Library is becoming more

secure. This week a location for the library has been selected and approved.

Dr. J. E. Anthony, (a) public spirited citizen(,) has donated the use of a room over Keeter’s

Department Store. The room is to be used temporarily until space can be had in the new Town

Hall which is hoped that will be built soon. The room adjoins the law office of E. A. Harrill. The

place selected is centrally located and will be accessible to everyone.

A third critical step was to gain the support of the North Carolina Library Commission. This advance was

announced in the newspaper on 8 October 1936.

Marjorie Beal, Secretary and Director of the North Carolina Library Commission, of Raleigh,

made a trip to Kings Mountain last week to confer with those interested in having a Public

Library here. She offered the services of her office in selecting the books, setting up the proper

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system. She also said that a Librarian could be secured from W. P. A. or N. Y. A. and that

shelves, desk and other equipment could be secured through Federal agencies.

Meanwhile, cash contributions and book donations for the library continued. Fundraising, which had reached

$284.80 in early November, accelerated when Mrs. Hunter Ramseur (Anne Lutz) Neisler (1909-1982) became

finance chairman of the library drive. On Christmas eve 1936 the newspaper reported donations had nearly

doubled to $543.27, exceeding the goal of $500 for book purchases. In the event the public library did not open

in the second-story space donated by Dr. Anthony, but it began operation instead on 15 February 1937 in a room

in the building on Cherokee Street occupied as a temporary city hall.

While citizens of Kings Mountain were advancing the library initiative in 1936, other city leaders were seeking

federal funding for a new town hall. That support was secured and the plans of the new municipal building to

occupy the site of the existing town hall in the 100 block of South Piedmont Avenue were in hand and approved

by year’s end. In January 1937 the town offices were relocated temporarily to the Webb building on Cherokee

Street, the old town hall was taken down, and construction began on the new building on the eleventh.

The scheduled opening of the public library on Monday afternoon, 15 February 1937, was announced on the

front page of the Kings Mountain Herald on 11 February. An account of the opening appeared under the

headline, “Public Library Now Open,” in the weekly newspaper on 18 February 1937.

Kings Mountain’s Public Library is now open and everyone is invited to come by and get a book.

About 500 volumes are already on the shelves, and more are on the way. Temporary quarters are

at the Town Hall.

Mrs. Lois Young, District Supervisor, and Mrs. Jesse O’Shield, County Supervisor of WPA(,)

were in Kings Mountain Monday and Tuesday for the opening. They instructed Miss Ida Davis,

local Librarian, in the system of keeping the books. The committee in charge of opening the

Library are deeply indebted to Mesdames Young and O’Shield for their generous co-operation, in

making Kings Mountain’s Library possible.

The Board of Trustees of the Library named this week to have supervision for the next twelve

months are: Mrs. Hunter Neisler, Rev. W. M. Boyce, Mayor J. E. Herndon and Haywood E.

Lynch.

Articles on patronage of the library and the acquisition of new books continued to appear in the town’s weekly

newspaper through the spring and early summer of 1937 as the new city hall neared completion. The handsome

Colonial-Revival style building, whose architect remains to be confirmed, was accepted by the city in mid-July

1937 and the several offices housed in the temporary municipal building were relocated to the new Kings

Mountain Town Hall in the last weeks of the month. The library was destined to remain in the Cherokee Street

building for some time yet. Apparently the “completion” of the building had not included the finishing of rooms

in the basement of the new building for the town library. The matter was discussed at the Town Council in

August and September and the situation was explained in part in an article, “No Books From Library,” in the

Kings Mountain Herald on 16 September 1937.

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Permanent quarters for the Kings Mountain Public Library, the Red Cross Office, and County

Welfare Office are now under construction in basement of the new City Hall. Due to the fact that

carpenters will be working the balance of this week no books will be let out, but the Library will

be open to receive books that are due. Plans are now being made for the formal opening of the

Library in the new quarters shortly.

Meanwhile, on 26 August 1937, a status report on library patronage during its first six months of

operation appeared in the Kings Mountain Herald. As of 24 August, the book collection totaled

1,350 volumes, the library had issued 1,068 membership cards for borrowing privileges, and a

grand total of 9,620 books had been circulated. The library was open for four hours each

afternoon, Monday through Friday, and six hours on Saturday.

On 14 October 1937 the Kings Mountain Herald announced the relocation of the library to the new Kings

Mountain Town Hall and its opening on Friday afternoon, 15 October.

The big event is about here. The Kings Mountain Public Library will have its formal opening

Friday afternoon from 4 to 6 P.M. with every citizen of Kings Mountain invited to attend. Light

refreshments will be served.

The Library is now located in the basement of the new Town Hall. New shelves have been built,

the walls and floor painted, in fact everything is in first class shape, and it is hoped the citizens of

Kings Mountain will show their interest at the Library by visiting during the hours named.

Mrs. Jesse O’Shield, County WPA Supervisor, and Mrs. Pansy Fetzer, District NYA Supervisor,

will be present for the opening. Mesdames O’Shield and Fetzer have co-operated from the very

beginning of the Library and to them should go a great deal of the credit for the success of the

Public Library. They have labored faithfully in behalf of the Kings Mountain Public Library.

The public library would remain in the municipal building for ten years, until 1947, when the move was made to

the former Hord residence. During the first years of this decade Haywood Lynch served as the president of the

library and fostered its development with the support of Mrs. Hunter Neisler, the Reverend William Moore

Boyce, and James E. Herndon (189_-1959), mayor (1933-1939) of Kings Mountain, among others. On 2 March

1939 the Kings Mountain Herald published a short account of the library’s success under the front-page

headline, “Kings Mountain Library Passes Second Milestone.” Four weeks later, on 30 March 1939, the local

newspaper published a more comprehensive account of operations under the heading, “Kings Mountain Citizens

Are Using Their Public Library.”

By the end of 1939, Miss Ida Davis, having married a member of the Littlejohn family, had resigned her

position as librarian. The arrangements for her replacement were reported in the Kings Mountain Herald on 1

January 1940 under the caption, “New Librarian at Public Library.”

Miss Virginia Harrelson is being instructed by Mrs. Ida Davis Littlejohn, former Librarian. Miss

Harrelson is from the National Youth Administration under the direction of Mrs. Frances B.

Chewning, County Supervisor, Shelby. Miss Geneva Sheppard, another NYA member (,) will

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alternate with Miss Harrelson in keeping the Library. Each young lady will have charge of the

Library for two weeks each month.

Mrs. Chewning was happy to cooperate with Kings Mountain Library officials in furnishing two

Librarians, and patrons of the Kings Mountain Public Library are very grateful to Mrs. Chewning

and the National Youth Administration.

The public library steadily grew both its book collection and its patronage by residents of Kings Mountain in the

period through World War II under the supervision of Mrs. Bertie Hughes Campbell (190_-1951), who became

librarian.

The press of patronage in the limited space available to the library in the basement of the Town Hall and the

apparent inability to expand into adjoining parts of the building prompted efforts to secure larger, better

facilities for the town library. On 17 May 1945 the Kings Mountain Herald published a short bulletin of a

meeting on the matter. “Some 25 Kings Mountain citizens attended a meeting at the City Hall Tuesday night to

discuss plans for expansion of facilities of the Kings Mountain public library. No action was taken with the

exception that Mayor J. H. Thompson is to appoint a committee to investigate possibilities and make a

recommendation.” The need would be addressed by circumstance and the magnanimous gift of the Hord house

by the children of Jacob Simri and Margaret Juletta Rudisill Mauney in memory of their parents, reflecting the

remarkably close relationship of people and place that has always featured in the history of Kings Mountain.

The Hord Family and Their House

Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord (1863-1930), who erected the imposing yellow-brick house that has served

as Kings Mountain’s public library since 1947, was a many-faceted man who exercised a leading role in the

civic, social, and commercial life of the town while also having a successful medical practice. A native of

Cleveland County and a son of Jesse (182_-1911) and Elizabeth Hord, he attended the University of North

Carolina, graduated from Tennessee State Normal College, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1889, and received his

medical degree in 1891 in Louisville, Kentucky. On 25 November 1891 he married Mattie White (1867-1895)

who died from complications with the birth of the couple’s third son William E. Hord (1895). Otto Leon Hord

(1893-1920), alone of the three, lived to adulthood. Dr. Hord next married Carrie Belle White (1877-1940), his

wife’s younger sister: they were the parents of nine children, the last-born and last-surviving of whom was

Carolyn Rebecca Hord Harris (1919-2013).

The Misses White were the daughters of William White (1838-

1916) and his wife, who lived with their family in a house in the southeast corner of King Street and Piedmont

Avenue.

On 19 January 1892, within two months of his marriage, Dr. Hord purchased the lot in the southwest corner of

Piedmont Avenue and King Street, with a frontage of 100 feet on South Piedmont Avenue and 218 feet along

West King Street, from Philip Sylvanus Baker (1848-1907) and his wife Selena Ellen Patterson Baker (1850-

1912).

The property was described in the deed “as the old School House lot” and had been the site of one of

the earliest known schools in Kings Mountain, which dated to ca. 1875 and was taught by Alexander Aderholdt.

Whether the Hords immediately made their home here is unconfirmed but very likely. The lot was at the

intersection of King Street/later US 74, the principal east/west artery through Kings Mountain, and Piedmont

Avenue, which was long a principal residential avenue in Kings Mountain and, through time, also boasted the

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churches of the town’s five leading congregations, the Kings Mountain Town Hall (1937-1979), the United

States Post Office (1939-1987), and the offices and plant of the Kings Mountain Herald along its length. On 23

October 1907 Dr. Hord increased this holding by purchasing a rectangular lot on its west end, measuring 65 by

250 feet, with a West King Street frontage of sixty-five feet, from A. J. Stockton and his wife.

In the event it

was on this enlarged, L-shaped corner lot, of the many properties he owned, that he built the house in ca. 1923,

which became his family’s legacy to Kings Mountain and remains, some ninety years later, a landmark in its

townscape. The architect and builder of the house are not known at present.

Jacob George Van Buren Hord died on 4 January 1930 and was buried in Mountain Rest Cemetery in the family

plot that held the graves of his first wife and their three sons, those of two infants born in 1900 and 1901 of his

second wife, and the graves of his wives’s parents, William White (1838-1916) and Margaret J. White (1840-

1895). His will, signed on 16 September 1922 and acknowledging the relative youth of the children of his

second marriage, left his estate intact under the administration of his widow until the youngest child, Carolyn

Rebecca Hord, came of age.

Carrie Belle White Hord resided at the family house with her unmarried children, including her daughters Mary

Frances Hord and Maude Eunice Hord (1917-1948), until her death on 25 November 1940. In her will she made

provisions for those daughters and the recently-married Carolyn Hord Harris, a special cash bequest to James

Edwin Hord, her only surviving son, and she bequeathed her estate in equal shares to her six surviving children.

Her obituary, published on the front page of the Kings Mountain Herald on 28 November 1940, acknowledged

that “Mrs. Hord . . . since the death of her husband several years ago has shouldered the burden of the

management of large real estate holdings.” The Hord House remained the residence of the unmarried sisters for

some time, through the marriage of Mary Frances Hord to Thomas White Cothran, and the property of the Hord

heirs into October 1946.

On 3 October 1946 the front page of the Kings Mountain Herald had a full-width headline, “Mauney Family

Purchases Hord Home For Memorial Library.”

The children and grandchildren of the late Jacob S. and Margaret Juletta Mauney have purchased

the property of the late Dr. J. G. Hord at the corner of King street and Piedmont avenue, and,

after the house has been renovated and other changes made, will present it to the City of Kings

Mountain as a memorial library the purchasers announced on Tuesday.

Mr. (W. K.) Mauney said it was possible that the large two-story residence would be renovated in

order to provide accommodations for teachers on the second floor, with the first floor to be used

for a library.

The present city library is located in two rooms in the basement of the city hall. It was begun in

1936 and has been largely dependent for support upon interested citizens. In addition to

furnishing quarters, the city has been appropriating $600 per year for operation of the library. The

county also supplies a small supplement, and circulation has increased continuously.

For many years, a larger library with more volumes and more space has been placed high on the

list of the city’s needs by many leading citizens.

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In the announcement from the Mauney family, only the library was mentioned. An editorial lauding the

gift appeared in the newspaper on 10 October 1946.

Last week’s announcement by the children and grandchildren of the late Jacob S. and Margaret

Juletta Mauney that they are giving the Hord residence as a memorial library to their parents was

good news for Kings Mountain.

Quite coincidentally, the 1936 edition of the Herald, which published the obituary of Mr. Mauney

had another interesting headline which read: “Library for City Assured.”

That was the beginning of the present city library, which, while a far cry from the library a city of

this size should have, has progressed steadily in the decade that has passed.

Both the late Mr. and Mrs. Mauney were highly interested in the welfare of the community and

during their lifetime spent time, money and effort in seeing that the community advanced.

That their immediate heirs have seen fit to honor them in this manner must be translated by the

citizens as a noble civic gesture on the part of the heirs, as well as a deserved honor to two

pioneer citizens.

The community has needed an adequate library building and this gift should provide the impetus

to give the city a modern, up-to-date library which will serve all the community in a manner

befitting those it memorializes.

On 21 October 1946 the Hord heirs conveyed the family house and its two-parcel lot to the Mauney family for

the price of $26,500: the deed conveyed the property to William Kemp and Dorris Carl Mauney.

The deed

conveying the former Hord residence to the City of Kings Mountain was executed by Messrs. Mauney and their

wives, on behalf of the Mauney family, on 1 November 1947. The first condition written in the deed defined the

donation and provided for the eventual expansion of the library. “That it be used for a public library and

teachers Home and in the event the library should grow and expand and thereby need more room, in that event a

part or all of the Teachers Home may be used for the library.

The Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

The presentation ceremonies for the Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home were held on

Wednesday, 5 November 1947, at 4:00 p.m. In his address, Clyde Roark Hoey (1877-1954), a former governor

of North Carolina (1937-1941) and then a United States Senator (1945-1954), described Jacob S. Mauney as

“one of the real builders of Kings Mountain.”

Indeed he was. In 1873, Jacob S. Mauney (1846-1936) joined

his elder brother William Andrew Mauney (1841-1928) as residents of the place known as White Plains that

would become Kings Mountain in 1874. The sons of David Mauney, they grew up in the Muddy Fork

community, south/southwest of Cherryville, in today’s Cleveland County. The two men were leading figures in

the commercial, industrial, and civic development of Kings Mountain through the first half-century of the

town’s existence. They opened a store on today’s Battleground Avenue, and in ca. 1878 they are said to have

built and occupied the first two-story brick commercial building in Kings Mountain. A decade later, in 1888,

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Jacob S. Mauney was one of the organizers of the Kings Mountain Manufacturing Company, the first of a series

of locally-owned textile mills in Kings Mountain that formed the basis of its development and prosperity well

into the third-quarter of the twentieth century. He served as general manager of the company from 1896 and as

its president from 1929 until his death, while also acting as an investor and organizer of the Bonnie, Dilling,

Mauney, and Sadie mills and the Bank/First National Bank of Kings Mountain in ca. 1900. Mr. Mauney was

also a founder of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church and an important donor and trustee of Lenoir-Rhyne

University, Hickory, North Carolina, where Mauney Hall, now a part of Mauney-Schaeffer Conference Hall,

reflects his family’s association with the school. On 11 September 1873 he married Margaret Juletta Rudisill

(1850-1930), the daughter of John A. Rudisill of Lincoln County. They were the parents of seven children, six

of whom survived to adulthood and were donors of the library and teacherage to Kings Mountain: Samuel

Augustus Mauney (1874-1952), Rufus Lawrence Mauney (1876-1958), John David Mauney (1878-1947),

Dorris (Dorus) Carl Mauney (1881-1956), Vera Lavene Mauney Cooper (1887-1983), and William Kemp

Mauney (1889-1970).

In 1947 only the two front, first-story parlors and east front of the center entrance hall were set apart and

furnished for library use. The “Adult Reading Room” was located in the north parlor, on the north side of the

hall, and the “Children’s Room” was in the pendant parlor on the south side of the hall. Photographs of these

rooms and those set apart on the first and second stories and furnished for the teacherage were published in the

commemorative program. In the adult room the mantel had been removed and tall shelving installed on its

walls. Across the hall, the corbelled brick mantel remained in place, however, the doors opening in the south

wall onto the sun porch were closed and the south wall fitted with open shelves. The librarian’s desk was likely

located in the entrance hall, where the arched opening into the west half of the hall was infilled with wallboard.

The Hord family’s formal dining room was apparently retained for library office and work space. The Hords’

sitting room, adjoining the north parlor on the west and enjoying access to the north sitting porch, became the

teachers’ living room. The door opening onto the north porch likely became the principal entrance for the

teachers’ home. The Hord family’s private dining room served again for the teachers as, apparently, also did the

kitchen. How and by whom the first-story bedroom and bathroom in the northwest corner of the first story were

utilized is not now known. On the second story the front of the spacious center hall was furnished as a sitting

room for teachers while the southeast, front bedroom, also pictured, was furnished with Colonial Revival-style

furniture. The library quarters were renovated by Mrs. Campbell, the librarian, and Mrs. George (Laura Juletta

Mauney) Houser (1914-2009), secretary-treasurer of the local library board and the daughter of Dorris C.

Mauney, in consultation with a representative of the state library administration. Whether Mrs. Houser also

oversaw the furnishing of the teachers’ quarters is unconfirmed, but likely. The funds realized from the rentals

to teachers were used to support the library’s expenses.

The operations of the Mauney Memorial Library through the 1950s and the early 1960s, up to fiscal year 1963-

1964, are relatively little documented. After the expansive coverage of the library’s organization appearing in

the Kings Mountain Herald, while Haywood Eugene Lynch was owner and editor (1935-194_), and the

newspaper’s coverage of the gift of the Jacob Simri Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home to the city

of Kings Mountain, fewer articles appeared in the Kings Mountain Herald. The archives of the Mauney

Memorial Library contain no known surviving records of its operations until 1963-1964, when an “Income

statement for period from June 30, 1963 thru Feb. 1964,” the library’s earliest extant administrative document,

was prepared. In addition to listing income from both the city and county governments, two other identified

income sources, “Rents from Apartments” and “Transferred from Teacherage Fund,” reflect changes that had

occurred at the facility. As can now be best determined, the use of rooms in the building as a teacherage had

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apparently ceased during or at the end of the 1962-1963 school year, and they were adapted as apartments in

1963. The sums in the respective categories, $958.33 for apartment rental income and $43.69 as a transfer from

the teacherage fund, reflect that transitional period. The total income stated in the report is $2,567.56.

A separate income statement covering the fiscal year of July 1, 1963, to 30 June 1964 provides the earliest

annual documentation of the Mauney Memorial Library’s operations. Income for the year ($3,392.02) included

apartment rentals of $1,943.33, sums of $900 and $500, respectively, from the City of Kings Mountain and

Cleveland County, and the residual teacherage fund of $43.69. Expenses, including salaries, utilities, supplies,

and maintenance, for the year totaled $3,312.70. The purchase of books and library materials was made through

a separate account identified as the “Book Fund.” Income, including principal support from the “United Fund,”

memorials, and donations totaled $1,107.92. Expenditures for books and magazine subscriptions totaled

$808.22.

The earliest full record of the Mauney Memorial Library’s circulation appears in a report covering the period

from “July 1, 1963 to June 1, 1964.” The circulation of 17,827 juvenile and 9,407 adult books comprised a total

circulation of 27,234 volumes. Registration (borrowing privileges) for the period of “January 1, 1964 to June

15, 1964” were held by 679 residents of the town and 171 county residents totaling 850 registered patrons. The

undated book inventory of 7,518 volumes appearing at the bottom of this single-sheet report included 519

newly-purchased books.

The deed by which the Mauney family conveyed the library and teacherage to the city of Kings Mountain has no

clause or condition relating to race and no restriction limiting use of the library to white residents of Kings

Mountain. Neither does the deed have language limiting the residents of the teacherage to white teachers,

however, there were no African American teachers known to have occupied rooms in the teacherage. Beginning

in 1946 the Shelby Public Library provided separate library services for African American citizens at its George

Washington Carver Branch on Buffalo Street. This arrangement continued until 1971, when the newly-built,

consolidated Cleveland County Memorial Library opened and provided services to all races. When African

American residents of Kings Mountain began patronizing the Mauney Memorial Library is not now known,

however, their use must have dated to about 1963-1964. In the report on registration for the period from

“January 1, 1964 to June 15, 1964,” the 679 Kings Mountain citizens with borrowing privileges comprised 644

“White” registered patrons of the library and 35 “Negro” registered patrons. This integrated use of the Mauney

Memorial Library predated the integration of the Kings Mountain public schools, which occurred in 1965 when

both black and white students first attended the newly-constructed, consolidated Kings Mountain High School.

Further change and improvements came in the 1970s. In 1973 Mrs. Charles Garrett (Willie Mobley) Dilling

(1903-1990) retired as librarian, and she was succeeded by Mrs. Hazel Herndon Fryer (1914-2003), who served

as librarian until 1981. Because of fire code regulations and safety issues the apartment rentals altogether ceased

ca. 1975. During Mrs. Fryer’s tenure the library was expanded into all of the first-story rooms with the addition

of “junior rooms” in 1976 and the fitting up of a “Carolina Room” in 1978, which housed local history and

genealogical materials and was dedicated to Bonnie Mauney Summers (1897-1976), a local historian and

daughter of William A. Mauney. The 1978 renovation also included the addition of two public restrooms. The

“junior rooms” were named in memory of Jan Marion Fryer (1955-1974), the librarian’s daughter. The year of

1978 is also an important one in the archival history of Mauney Memorial Library. Except for a loose, single-

page account of a meeting on 13 April 1976, the earliest known surviving minutes of the library board of

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trustees is a bound volume of minutes that begins with the meeting of 13 April 1978 and continues through 9

July 1984.

The 1980s were marked by the employment of the first professionally-trained librarian and the first of the two

major construction projects that substantially enlarged the existing library and produced the facility in use today.

In 1981 Mrs. Fryer was succeeded by Mary Jane Carbo, who held a master’s degree in library science. Her

tenure was short. In 1983 Ms. Carbo was succeeded by Rose Turner, who oversaw the first expansion of the

Mauney Memorial Library.

On 10 September 1986 the Kings Mountain Herald announced the proposed 2,680 square-foot addition to the

library under the headline, “200,000 Drive Begins to expand Mauney Library.” The addition, which deferred to

the existing library in its design, materials, and plan, was designed by the Shelby-based firm of Holland &

Hamrick Architects, with Roger Holland as principal for the work. Promotional materials, including a rendering

of the addition and a floor plan showing the arrangement of the new Carolina Room, auditorium/meeting room,

office, lavatories for male and female patrons, and a staff break room and related facilities, were prepared and

distributed. The addition included an emergency exit and an entrance into the break room, both opening on the

northwest-corner service porch, and a new entrance on the south side, accessible from the parking lot and

opening into a vestibule providing direct access to the auditorium/meeting room and adjoining men’s and

women’s lavatories. The drive officially began on 23 February 1987 at a banquet underwritten by local banks

and financial institutions and reported in newspaper articles published on 11 and 25 February 1987. Thereafter,

the Kings Mountain Herald published a series of articles on the expansion through 1987 including a long letter

to the editor by retired librarian, Hazel Herndon Fryer, which the newspaper effectively endorsed and treated as

an editorial under the heading “Support Library Drive” on 27 May 1987, “Room to Honor Mrs. Weir” on 3 June

1987 announcing plans to dedicate the auditorium/meeting room to Josephine Ellerbe Weir, and “Library

Receives Bid For Expansion” on 18 November 1987.

The Kings Mountain Herald article, “Huffman Awarded Contract,” published on 13 January 1988, was the first

of another series of articles appearing through 1988 that reported on the construction of the addition. The firm of

Huffman & Son, headed by Ted Huffman, a former superintendent of public works in the city, had submitted a

base bid of $249,500. On 21 September 1988 the newspaper published a short article under the heading,

“Library Work Continues,” noting Roger Holland’s report that work on the expansion was 74% complete at the

end of August and work was advancing to completion. The project was completed in November 1988, and on

16, 23, and 30 November the Kings Mountain Herald published articles that also announced an open house to

be held at the library on Sunday afternoon, 4 December 1988. At that time the library book collection totaled

24,468 volumes. The expansion added 2,680 square feet to the library’s existing 3,400 square footage on the

first story.

The decision to expand and improve the library facility was the first of two important efforts that have assured

the library’s professional growth and continued, expanded service to the citizens of Kings Mountain. In 1990-

1991 the city government and library board decided to seek the library’s first formal association with the North

Carolina State Library and gain identification as a “state aid library.” Prior to this time and its identification as a

state aid library, funding of library services at Mauney Memorial Library was provided in the majority by the

city government with additional support from Cleveland County as well as donations and private gifts. The

application process began in 1991 and included a successful “demonstration year” in which all aspects of library

operations were monitored and reviewed by state library division staff. Its identification as a state aid library has

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provided eligibility for state funds, eligibility for professional consultant services provided by system staff, and

eligibility to apply for competitive grants. This new status for the Mauney Memorial Library has supported

existing and expanded services and programs in Kings Mountain. Although it has received annual support from

Cleveland County for most, if not all of the period since 1947, the library has been a local, Kings Mountain

institution for its entire history. Today, the Mauney Memorial Library is one of ten independent municipal

libraries in North Carolina: this category includes the libraries in Hickory, Chapel Hill, and Southern Pines,

together with six others.

As expanded, the Mauney Memorial Library served its patrons and the citizens of Kings Mountain for almost a

decade until another expansion was contemplated to meet the needs of a growing children’s program that

included a large book and materials collection, story times, and a Summer reading program. In 1998 the library

board turned again to the Shelby firm, then operating as Holland Hamrick & Patterson Architects, P.A., for the

design of a second major addition. The plans for the work are dated 30 November 1998 and again deferred to

the style and materials of the original building and the 1988 addition. The two-level addition, possible because

of a drop in grade in the southwest corner of the library lot, featured major new facilities at the first-story level

and in a basement that is accessible at grade level from the adjoining Harris Funeral Home parking lot. The

expansion, named the Harris Family Children’s Wing, completed in 2000, and generally rectangular in plan, is

positioned on the south side of the 1988 addition. It utilizes the remodeled entrance from that project as the

principal entrance for the children’s area that includes a large open stack area, service desk, offices, and

lavatories. An enclosed stair in the southwest corner descends to the basement level that contains a large

meeting room, a full kitchen/catering facility, lavatories, and storage and mechanical rooms. The addition is

named in honor of John Oliver “Ollie” Harris (1913-1996), who served in the North Carolina Senate (1971-

1972, 1975-1990) and, since 1947, was the owner/proprietor of Harris Funeral Home located at 108 South

Piedmont Avenue, and members of his family.

In February 2004 Sharon Stack succeeded Rose Turner as library director. As a result of changing technologies

and evolving services for its patrons, the library board and administration undertook a facility study, which was

prepared in 2005-2006 by Talley & Smith Architecture, Incorporated, another firm based in Shelby, North

Carolina. Structural upgrades were completed in 2008. Three years later, in 2011, the firm of Hardy

Collaboration Architecture, based in New York City, was engaged for a Site Selection Study that analyzed

options for an entirely new library facility at another location in the center-city area of Kings Mountain.

Schemes for three sites, with the recommendation of a Gold Street location, were presented in draft form in

February 2012 and remain under consideration by the library board and city officials. Meanwhile, the Mauney

Memorial Library continues to serve its patrons at this historic facility, which was placed in service through the

generosity of the Mauney family in November 1947.

Social History and Education Significance

When a public library was organized in 1936 in Kings Mountain, it became the second municipal library in

Cleveland County, which was formed in 1841 from Rutherford and Lincoln counties. Cleveland County, whose

southern boundary is coterminous with the North Carolina/South Carolina state line, has a long history as a

prosperous agricultural-based economy. It also has enjoyed the wealth generated by an important textile

industry, from the late nineteenth century onward beginning in Lawndale and greatly expanded in Shelby, the

county seat, and Kings Mountain. The origins and history of the first municipal library, in Shelby, shares certain

parallels with the Kings Mountain library, most notably the fact that both were citizen-generated, and for

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periods both were located in Colonial Revival-style city halls erected in the 1930s with WPA funding. The two

libraries operated as municipal libraries in Cleveland County until 1962, when the Shelby Public Library was

reorganized as the Cleveland County Memorial Library. Thereafter, the Cleveland County Memorial Library and

the Mauney Memorial Library served the citizens of Cleveland County. In 1990 Cleveland County erected and

opened a satellite library in Lawndale, the Lawndale-Spangler Branch, which is one of three public libraries now

serving Cleveland County. Today the Mauney Memorial Library, operating since 1947 in the former Hord

residence and its additions, is the longest continually-operating library facility in Cleveland County and a

physical and institutional landmark in the county.

The genesis of the Cleveland County Memorial Library lies in the efforts of civically-minded ladies in Shelby in

the later 1900s and their organization of a subscription library in about 1909. According to local tradition that

library occupied a room on the second story of a commercial building in central Shelby. In 1914 the ladies are

said to have secured funding from the Shelby municipal government and the enterprise became a free public

library. At present an understanding of library operations in Shelby after 1914 remains to be confirmed,

however, the city’s embrace of library funding as a civic responsibility suggests that it was possibly housed in

the ca. 1911 city hall at 4 East Marion Street.

In the 1930s, from at least 1934 to the move to the Shelby City

Hall, the library was located in the Lineberger Building on North LaFayette Street.

In the late 1930s, when plans for a new city hall were being developed, the public library was considered to be

an important part of the proposed new building. Victor Winfred Breeze (1889-1961), secured the commission

and produced the plans for a handsome, five-part Colonial Revival-style building. The five-bay, two-story center

block was positioned on a diagonal in the southwest corner of South Washington and East Graham streets,

facing due northeast, with one-story hyphens and wings parallel with South Washington and East Graham

streets. The Shelby Public Library had pride of place in the five-bay wing at 302 South Washington Street.

“Public Library” was inscribed in the arched surround framing the center entrance.

Mrs. Maude Q. Kelsey (1904-1989), who succeeded Annette Shinn as librarian in 1952, directed the Shelby

Public Library through a sequence of transitions that included two moves in the 1960s, its reorganization as the

Cleveland County Memorial Library in 1962, and the construction of a new suburban facility, before a period of

stable operations leading to her retirement in 1980. The offices and functions of city government that were

comfortably housed in the Shelby City Hall in 1939 all grew in scope and spatial needs through the 1950s, and

one solution was to relocate the public library and situate administrative offices in its former space. During the

1960s the Shelby Public Library was housed in rented space, last on Lineberger Street in northeast Shelby in a

store in the Esther Mills complex. These were temporary measures leading to a better resolution. The decision to

reorganize the Shelby Public Library as the Cleveland County Public Library, jointly made by city and county

officials, later prompted the decision to erect a new library facility on city-owned land in west Shelby between

West Marion and West Sumter streets at today’s 104 Howie Drive. Holland & Riviere, a partnership of

Lawrence Pegram Holland, Jr. and Jack P. Riviere and the successor firm to the office founded in 1935 by

Victor W. Breeze, designed a one-story contemporary building that was completed in 1971.

In 1980 Mrs. Kelsy was succeeded as librarian by Doug Perry, and he, in turn, was succeeded in 1986 by Mrs.

Carol Heaven Wilson (b.1951), the present director of the Cleveland County Memorial Library. In addition to

the expected upgrades in services, facilities, and programming, she oversaw two important projects in 1989-

1990. The building on Howie Drive was enlarged and essentially doubled in size by an addition designed by

Oliver Stanhope Anthony, a principal in the Shelby-based firm of Martin Boal Anthony & Johnson. The

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

expanded library opened in September 1990. Simultaneously, Mrs. Wilson was overseeing the design and

construction of a satellite facility in Lawndale, designed by Lyle E. Smith and opened as the Lawndale-Spangler

Branch in April 1990.

Although the three public libraries in Cleveland County have a shared role as social institutions, supported by its

citizens and their governments, and each likewise serves important educational objectives, all exercised for civic

betterment, the Mauney Memorial Library holds a second distinction in addition to its significance as the

longest-serving library facility by far. Namely, its significance in the area of education as a teacherage in Kings

Mountain. The building’s role as a “Teachers’ Home” from 1947 to ca. 1962-1963, while relatively short in

span, nevertheless met a critical local need as a residence for educators. It also represents an important, known

example of such facilities that have gone little noticed in the history of public education in North Carolina. In

the state’s larger cities and urban areas, apartments and boarding houses answered the housing needs of young

men and women, newly-graduated as teachers, mostly unmarried, and embarking on careers as public school

teachers. In North Carolina’s smaller towns, such as Kings Mountain, and its rural areas, where the housing

options were limited and there were few rental properties, teacherages served an important function as

comfortable, if also somewhat temporary lodgings.

At present only one teacherage in North Carolina is individually listed in the National Register, the Fuquay

Springs Teacherage in Fuqua-Varina, Wake County, which was erected in 1945 and expanded in 1947. It was

erected by the Wake County Board of Education and funded and maintained by the school system, like others in

North Carolina. The Kings Mountain teacherage was a gift to the city and its educational system, essentially

self-sustaining as part of the library facility. The funds raised through rentals to teachers were used to support

the library operations and expenses, including maintenance, according to the Mauney family’s deed of gift.

In the years preceding the gift of the Mauney family to the city of Kings Mountain in 1947, young, mostly

female, unmarried teachers boarded in private homes, often through the introductions of mutual friends, and to

the benefit of host and lodger alike. This was especially true in the 1920s when statewide school consolidation,

expansion, and improvements presented new opportunities for young teachers and in the 1930s when economic

conditions forced new financial considerations on many. The attractive, appealing, comfortably-furnished

private rooms and shared living quarters of the Teachers’ Home in the former Hord residence represented a

distinct asset for the city and facilitated the local school board’s ability to engage good teachers for the nearby

Central High School and the town’s elementary schools. In his full-page, illustrated article on the dedicatory

ceremonies and the Mauney family’s gift to Kings Mountain, published in the Gastonia Gazette on 8 November

1947, James W. Atkins, the newspaper’s editor, wrote “Perhaps few cities in the state can boast teacherages of

comparable appearance, comfort, and convenience.”

The number of teacherages erected in North Carolina is not known, and their history has had limited

examination. Teacherages associated with schools funded by the Rosenwald Fund have been researched by the

North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Also, Historic Preservation Office survey files hold records

of thirty-eight teacherages in North Carolina of which thirty-seven are standing. This number includes the

Belwood School Teacherage at Belwood in rural Cleveland County, a one-and-a-half story brick-veneer

bungalow erected ca. 1926 and used as a teacherage until ca. 1960. Changed social conditions and evolving

expectations for housing effectively eliminated the need for such facilities after about the mid twentieth

century.

In Kings Mountain, the teachers’ rooms in the Mauney Memorial Library were simply adapted as

rental apartments in ca. 1963 and in ca. 1975 ceased to be used for domestic purposes altogether. Nevertheless,

United States Department of the Interior

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NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

their role in the educational history of Kings Mountain remains a matter of record, preserved in the photographs

in the 1947 presentation commemorative and in the small notices surviving on inside faces of four bedroom

doors stating the rates for rental to teachers.

Endnotes

1. Biographical information on Haywood Eugene Lynch was compiled by this author and is maintained by

the author.

2. Biographical information on Josephine Ellerbe Weir was compiled by this author from several sources,

including the generous assistance of Melvin L. Ware, who holds extensive research materials on the

Weir/Ware family.

3. The meeting was held at the residence of the Reverend William Moore Boyce, minister at Boyce

Memorial Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church that then stood in the northwest corner of King

Street and Piedmont Avenue. Others present at the meeting were Mrs. Arthur Hunter Patterson,

representing the Senior Woman’s Club, and Dr. Oliver Preston Lewis as representative of the American

Legion. Attorney Jedeth Roan Davis, the representative of the Men’s Club, was unable to attend. Some

two months later he was among the first to donate books to the library. The Boyce residence was in fact

the A.R.P. Church manse and stood on the west side of North Piedmont Avenue, between the church and

the Jacob S. Mauney residence.

4. From 1937 into fall 1947 the Kings Mountain Public Library was housed in the Town Hall at 112 South

Piedmont Avenue. The grand Southern Colonial Revival-style residence of Dr. Hord and his family

stood to the north at 100 South Piedmont Avenue, in the southwest corner of Piedmont Avenue and

King Street, then as now the principal east/west artery through Kings Mountain. Boyce Memorial

Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church stood in the northwest corner of the intersection. The church

manse stood on the north side of the church and faced North Piedmont Avenue. Jacob Simri Mauney, his

wife, and their family lived in a large Queen Anne-style weatherboarded frame house immediately north

of the manse at 105 North Piedmont Avenue. The rear property line of the Jacob Mauney house lot is

also that of the house lot of Mr. Mauney’s brother, William Andrew Mauney, whose similarly imposing

Queen Anne-style weatherboarded frame house stands to the west at 108 North Railroad Avenue, faces

west, and overlooks the railroad tracks that bisect Kings Mountain. James E. Herndon (189_-1959), the

four term mayor of Kings Mountain (1933-1939, 1949-1951), was a son-in-law of William A. Mauney

and then resided with his wife in the family residence. Hunter Neisler, whose wife was an ardent

supporter of the library, was Mr. Mauney’s grandson. Dr. James Edward Anthony (1887-1967) and his

family lived in a house on the east side of North Piedmont Avenue at #108.

5. Biographical information on Dr. Hord and his family, including gravestone inscriptions in Mountain

Rest Cemetery and notes from a telephone interview with Carolyn Rebecca Hord Harris (1919-2013)

was compiled by and is held by this author.

6. Cleveland County Deeds, BB/409.

7. Cleveland County Deeds, SS/303.

8. Cleveland County Wills, 4/596.

9. Cleveland County Wills, 5/535-37.

10. Cleveland County Deeds, 5Q/596-99.

11. Cleveland County Deeds, 5S/589. The Mauney family’s gift included only the original front lot

measuring 100 by 218 feet.

12. The principal record of the ceremonies attending the presentation of the library and teacherage is the

illustrated commemorative program prepared and printed afterward. A copy is held by the Mauney

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

Memorial Library. It contains the text of Senator Hoey’s tribute as well as those of Edwin Yates Webb

(1872-1955), a former member (1903-1919) of the House of Representatives and a long-time federal

judge of the Western District of North Carolina, and the Reverend Jacob Levi Morgan, D. D. (1872-

1960), president (1919-1947) of the North Carolina (Lutheran) Synod who delivered the invocation, and

“A Life Sketch” of Jacob S. Mauney and his wife. No known surviving copies of the Kings Mountain

Herald for 1947 exist.

13. Biographical information on Jacob Simri Mauney, his wife, and their children, was compiled by this

author from several sources including “A Life Sketch” cited in endnote #12 and Mr. Mauney’s obituary

published in the Kings Mountain Herald on 19 November 1936 under the heading, “ ‘Grand Old Man’

Passes” and a photograph.

14. Copies of the newspaper articles concerning the planning, design, and construction of the addition in

1987-1988 are held in the files of the Mauney Memorial Library and were made available to this author.

The date at which the parking area on the south side of the library, south of the south property line

defined in the deed of gift in 1947, came into use for library patrons in unconfirmed. It comprises part of

the sixty-foot wide lot of a one-story frame house at 102 South Piedmont Avenue that was acquired by

the Kings Mountain Redevelopment Commission at an undetermined date and became the property of

the City of Kings Mountain with the abolishment of the Kings Mountain Redevelopment Commission

and the transference of its functions and property to the city effective 12 February 1980. See Cleveland

County Deeds, 17G/580-82.

15. Information on the Shelby Public Library and the Cleveland County Memorial Library was provided to

this author by Carol Heaven Wilson, director, Cleveland County Memorial Library in a telephone

interview on 16 December 2013. An early-twentieth-century photograph of the ca. 1911 Shelby City

Hall appears on page 131 of Architectural Perspectives of Cleveland County, North Carolina.

16. Accounts of the Shelby City Hall and its architect, Victor Winfred Breeze, are published on pages 45-47

and 201 in Architectural Perspectives of Cleveland County, North Carolina. A handsome watercolour

presentation drawing of the City Hall, prepared by Fred Wan Wageningen (b. 1904), a draftsman-

designer in Mr. Breeze’s office, appears on page 44.

17. Carol Heaven Wilson, telephone interview with author, 16 December 2013.

18. Ibid.

19. A short account and photograph of the Belwood School Teacherage appears on page 167 of

Architectural Perspectives of Cleveland County, North Carolina. In Catawba County, the one-and-a-

half-story, brick veneer teacherage erected by the county school system beside Banoak School, in the

southwest corner of NC 10 and Banoak Road (SR 2043) in Vale, was the home of the school principal

and his family and Miss Mildred Allen, one of the school’s two first-grade teachers, for all or part of the

period from 1954 to 1962, when this author attended the school there. The Banoak teacherage ceased to

be occupied as a residence and has long since been demolished.

9. Major Bibliographical References

Bibliography (Cite the books, articles, and other sources used in preparing this form.)

Baity, Dave. Tracks Through Time: A History of the City of Kings Mountain, 1874-2005.

Kings Mountain, NC: Kings Mountain Historical Museum Foundation, Inc., 2005.

Cleveland County Deeds, Office of the Register of Deeds, Shelby, NC.

Cleveland County Wills, Office of the Clerk of Court, Cleveland County Court House, Shelby,

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

NC.

Eades, Brian R. Architectural Perspectives of Cleveland County, North Carolina, ed. J. Daniel

Pezzoni. Shelby, NC: Cleveland County Historic Property Task Force, 2003.

Gastonia Gazette, “Jacob S. Mauney Library Dedicated In Kings Mtn.,” 8 November 1947.

Hord, Jacob George Van Buren, biographical file compiled and held by this author, Vale, NC.

Kings Mountain Herald: “Selected,” 17 January 1935,

“Haywood E. Lynch Has Leased Kings Mountain Herald,” 24 January 1935,

“A City Public Library,” 7 February 1935,

“More About Public Library,” 21 February 1935,

“The High School Library,” 16 May 1935,

“Room For Library,” 11 July 1935,

“Lynch Buys The Herald,” 18 July 1935,

“Our Town Library,” 3 October 1935,

“J. S. Mauney Honored By Local Cotton Mills,” 26 December 1935,

“A Reminder,” 2 January 1936,

“Plan For A Library For Kings Mountain,” 9 January 1936,

“Library Plan Gets Going,” 12 March 1936,

“Public Library Meeting Held,” 19 March 1936,

“Former Citizen Endorses Library,” 26 March 1936,

“Junior Club Donates To Public Library Funds,” 9 April 1936,

“That Library,” 30 April 1936,

“Kings Mountain Library Starts,” 21 May 1936,

“Donate Encyclopedia To Library,” 2 July 1936,

“Town Appropriates Funds For Library” and “Thanks And Congratulations,”

9 July 1936,

“Location For Public Library Secured,” 16 July 1936,

“More Books Donated,” 20 August 1936,

“Library For Kings Mountain On The Way,” 8 October 1936,

“Library Drive Now On” and “Boost That Library,” 15 October 1936.

“Public Library Goal Is Drawing Nearer,” 22 October 1936,

“Mrs. Hunter Neisler Library Drive Chairman,” 5 November 1936,

“More Cash Received For Public Library,” 12 November 1936,

“Library Drive Goes Over Top” and “‘Grand Old Man’ Passes,”

19 November 1936,

“Library Committee Meeting,” 26 November 1936,

“Public Library To Open Soon,” 17 December 1936,

“Another Library Donation Received,” 24 December 1936,

“Temporary Location Town Hall Announced,” 31 December 1936,

“Town Hall Moves,” 7 January 1937,

“Location For Kings Mountain’s Public Library Secured,” 28 January 1937,

“Room For Library Constructed,” 4 February 1937,

“Library Opens Monday,” 11 February 1937,

“Public Library Now Open” and “Thanks A Million,” 18 February 1937,

“Library Proving Very Popular” and “’Stand Behind Your Library,’”

25 February 1937,

United States Department of the Interior

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Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

“Study Club Starts Canvas For Library Books,” 11 March 1937,

“Library Receives New Books,” 3 June 1937,

“Regular Meeting Of Town Board Held Monday,” 12 August 1937,

“Large Number Making Use Of Public Library,” 26 August 1937,

“Monthly Meeting Of Town Council Is Held Monday,” 9 September 1937,

“No Books From Library,” 16 September 1937,

“Formal Opening Of Library Friday,” 14 October 1937,

“Kings Mountain Library Passes Second Milestone,” 2 March 1939,

“Kings Mountain Citizens Are Using Their Public Library,” 30 March 1939,

“Mrs. J. G. Hord Passes After Long Illness,” 28 November 1940,

“Local News Bulletins: ‘Library Meeting,’” 17 May 1945,

“Mauney Family Purchases Hord Home For Memorial Library,”

3 October 1946,

“Mauney Gift,” 10 October 1946,

“200,000 Drive Begins To Expand Mauney Library,” 10 September 1986,

“KM Library To Kick Off $200,000 Expansion Drive,” 11 February 1987,

“Library Fund Drive Begins,” 25 February 1987,

“Editor Pushed For KM Library,” 15 April 1987,

“Support Library Drive,” 27 May 1987,

“Room To Honor Mrs. Weir,” 3 June 1987,

“Library Receives Bid For Expansion,” 18 November 1987,

“Huffman Awarded Contract,” 13 January 1988,

“Library Work Continues,” 21 September 1988,

“Library Plans Open House,” 16 November 1988,

“Open House December 4 at KM’s Mauney Library” and “Auditorium To Honor

Mrs. Weir,” 22 November 1988,

“Library Sets Open House,” 30 November 1988.

Kings Mountain Mirror: “Mauney Library Enters 25

Year,” 12 January 1972.

Kings Mountain Mirror-Herald: “Library improvements roundabout, but sure,” 18 March 1976,

“New Room Under Construction At Library,” 24 October 1978.

Lynch, Haywood Eugene, biographical file compiled and held by this author, Vale, NC.

Mauney, Jacob Simri, biographical file compiled and held by this author, Vale, NC.

Mauney Memorial Library Archives, Mauney Memorial Library, Kings Mountain, NC.

Page, Guilford Garfield, biographical file compiled and held by this author, Vale, NC.

Presentation of Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home To City Of Kings Mountain,

Wednesday Afternoon, November Fifth, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Seven At Four O’Clock. N. p., n.d.

Ware, Melvin L., letters to author, 16 December 2013 and 20 January 2014.

Wilson, Carol Heaven, telephone interview with author, 16 December 2013.

Previous documentation on file (NPS):

Primary location of additional data:

preliminary determination of individual listing (36 CFR 67 has been

State Historic Preservation Office

requested)

Other State agency

previously listed in the National Register

Federal agency

previously determined eligible by the National Register

Local government

designated a National Historic Landmark

University

recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey #____________

Other

recorded by Historic American Engineering Record # __________

Name of repository:

Office of Archives & History

recorded by Historic American Landscape Survey # ___________

1109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, NC

United States Department of the Interior

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NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

10. Geographical Data

Acreage of Property

Less than one acre

(Do not include previously listed resource acreage.)

UTM References

(Place additional UTM references on a continuation sheet.)

468830

3899590

Zone

Easting

Northing

Zone

Easting

Northing

Zone

Easting

Northing

Zone

Easting

Northing

Verbal Boundary Description (Describe the boundaries of the property.)

The property included in this nomination comprises Cleveland County tax parcels #6909 and #6910, adjoining

parcels that form a rectangle measuring 218 by 160 feet in the southwest corner of Piedmont Avenue and King

Street. The boundary of these parcels is outlined in bold on the enclosed print from the Cleveland County Tax

Map.

Boundary Justification (Explain why the boundaries were selected.)

The boundary is drawn to include the site and setting of the Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’

Home, the additions of 1987-1988 and 1999-2000, the immediately adjacent paved parking lots for staff and

patrons, and landscape features that comprise the current library facility. Parcel #6909 comprises the parcel

deeded on 1 November 1947 by members of the Mauney family to the City of Kings Mountain. Parcel #6910,

previously owned by the City of Kings Mountain, became a part of the library acreage coincident with the

expansion of 1999-2000 that occupies a portion of the parcel.

11. Form Prepared By

name/title

Davyd Foard Hood

organization

date

26 February 2014

street & number

Isinglass, 6907 Old Shelby Road

telephone

704/462-1847

city or town

Vale

state

zip code

28168

e-mail

Additional Documentation

Submit the following items with the completed form:

 Maps: A USGS map (7.5 or 15 minute series) indicating the property's location.

A Sketch map for historic districts and properties having large acreage or numerous resources. Key all

photographs to this map.

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

 Continuation Sheets

 Additional items: (Check with the SHPO or FPO for any additional items.)

Photographs:

Submit clear and descriptive photographs. The size of each image must be 1600x1200 pixels at 300 ppi (pixels per inch)

or larger. Key all photographs to the sketch map.

Schedule of Photographs

The following applies to all of the photographs included in this nomination.

Name of property: Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Location: Kings Mountain, Cleveland County, North Carolina

Name of photographer: Davyd Foard Hood

Dates of photographs: Photographs 1-2 and 4-8 were taken 25 August 2014,

photograph 3 on 16 June 2013, and photographs

9-16 on 15 June 2013.

Location of original negatives: Division of Archives and History

109 East Jones Street

Raleigh, NC 27601

Photographs

1. Overall view of the Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home with additions

of 1987-1988 and 1999-2000, looking northwest.

2. Oblique view of east elevation, looking west/southwest.

3. Center, entrance bay on east elevation, looking west.

4. Overall view of original building and additions, looking west/northwest.

5. South elevation of original building (Hord House), looking north.

6. North elevation of original building, looking south.

7. Oblique view of north elevation of original building and 1987-1988 addition, looking

east/southeast.

8. West elevation of 1987-1988 (left) and 1999-2000 (right) additions with west gable end, roof,

and chimney of original building visible in center, looking east/northeast.

9. View of entrance and stair halls of original building, looking west.

10. View of present service desks in former south parlor with oil painting of the Mauneys

hanging on the south wall above wainscot, door opening into former sun porch in center, and

door opening into former dining room on right, looking southwest.

11. View from former south parlor through former dining room and family dining room (with

arched opening into china pantry) into former kitchen, areas all now used for library services,

looking west/northwest.

12. View in former north parlor showing original molded woodwork of Hord House and wood

shelving added for library use, looking east.

13. View of stair landing on second story, looking east.

United States Department of the Interior

National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012)

Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teachers’ Home

Cleveland County, NC

Name of Property County and State

14. Rate notices for teacherage on the north face of door opening from the former north center

bedroom into north secondary hall, looking south.

15. Efficiency kitchen unit on west wall of former southwest corner bedroom, looking southwest.

16. Service desk in reading room of the Harris Family Children’s Wing, looking northwest.

Property Owner:

(Complete this item at the request of the SHPO or FPO.)

name

Mr. Edgar O. Murphrey, Jr. Mayor, The City of Kings Mountain

street & number

Post Office Box 429

telephone

704/734-0333

city or town

Kings Mountain

state

zip code 28086

Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This information is being collected for applications to the National Register of Historic Places to nominate

properties for listing or determine eligibility for listing, to list properties, and to amend existing listings. Response to this request is required to obtain a

benefit in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (16 U.S.C.460 et seq.).

Estimated Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for this form is estimated to average 18 hours per response including time for reviewing

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this form to the Office of Planning and Performance Management. U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1849 C. Street, NW, Washington, DC.