By Rick Steelhammer, Coal Valley News
The oldest still-operating public school building in the state and a 107-year-old building in downtown Spencer that once served as the Roane County Jail are among three sites named to the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia’s Endangered Properties list for 2025.
The Middleway Historic District in Jefferson County is the third location to be listed as an endangered property by PAWV this year.
Mannington Public School
When completed in 1925, the three-story Romanesque Revival-style Mannington Public School was the largest building in Mannington, Marion County. At that time, the huge red brick building “was seemingly capable of holding the town’s entire population,” according to a description of the structure in the Society of Architectural Historians’ Archepedia online encyclopedia.
