Pearl High School: history and property description

              Pearl High School (Martin Luther King Magnet)
Nashville
Text by Jen Stoecker and Carroll Van West
Architectural Description
The historic Pearl High School, now named Martin Luther King Magnet at Pearl High School, is located at the corner of Jo Johnston and 17th Avenue in North Nashville. The building lies directly across from Watkins Park and south of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad and related railroad buildings. Directly north a few blocks on 17th Avenue is Fisk University. Tennessee State University exists west of Pearl High School. Meharry Medical College and the Andrew Jackson Federal Housing Project are also in the vicinity of Pearl High. This neighborhood is residential, commercial, and industrial in nature, located near railroad tracks and three African-American institutions of higher learning.
The original portion of the building that now houses Martin Luther King Magnet at Pearl High School was completed in 1937 and opened for students that same year. Named Pearl High School (Pearl High) for most of its existence, the building was designed by the prominent African-American architectural firm of McKissack and McKissack. The same firm built the 1945 and 1963 expansions to the school. The Nashville architectural firm of Street, Dixon, Rick designed the last addition to the school, the 1995 gymnasium. The building is constructed primarily of a dark a red brick veneer and Art Deco stylistic elements are added in light stone over concrete. The school was a project of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and a common style name associated with PWA projects that used Art Deco design elements is PWA Moderne. The exterior of the original building maintains a high degree of integrity, with replacement windows that follow the original window lines and metal doors representing the only significant changes to the facade.
The east facade of the 1937 building faces 17th Avenue, North and is three stories high with seventeen vertical columns of windows. Three decorative entrance bays divide the facade. A large, decorative concrete central entrance represents the principal access to the school, while two small entrances, set apart with concrete, flank the primary entrance. The principal entrance bay is divided into three sections, with the outer sections projecting slightly from the larger middle section. The bay rises a foot above the roof of the brick part of the building. A vertical, Art Deco stylized banner containing the word “education” is located atop each of the projecting outer sections. Below the banner, each floor contains windows grouped in threes, with five vertical panes. Below each window in the second and third stories is a decorative panel with three vertical lines. The middle section features an Art Deco stylized clock at the top, original to the building. Four slender rows of bricks in a running bond pattern form the vertical length of the middle section. On the second and third story, the middle bay features four windows with five vertical panes. Art Deco decorative grillwork completely covers these windows and the spaces between them. Under the grillwork is the name “Pearl High School” in stylized letters carved into the stone. The first story of the middle section contains four, modern metal doors that are divided by brick columns which continue the vertical lines from the windows above. Each door has an original window above it; the two small, outer doors each containing a square window with nine panes and the two middle doors featuring a large rectangular nine-paned window.