Easley High School Auditorium

Easley High School Auditorium is a historic building built in 1909 in Easley, South Carolina and now on the National Register of Historic Places. It is historically significant for its long association with education and civic life in Easley in the first half of the 20th century. The building served as Easley’s first and only high school from 1909 to 1940 and was central to the early experience and training of almost every local resident of that period.ArchitectureArchitecturally, the load-bearing masonry building in the Renaissance Revival style is significant for its early efforts to introduce steel trusses into traditional masonry-bearing wall and heavy timber construction. It has also been noted as an outstanding early example of the work of architects Frank H. and Joseph G. Cunningham. The building illustrates the early use of steel trusses to provide a clear-span auditorium with 18-foot ceilings. At the time of construction, use of steel trusses was still in the experimental phase. The design of the building is an early example of “the gradual replacement of load-bearing masonry and heavy timber structures with steel frame construction.” The building has 86 tall windows with segmental arches, laid out like those in many textile mills in the region.Later UseWhen the building opened in the fall of 1909, its classrooms allowed the seventh through tenth grades to have their own rooms for the first time (an eleventh grade was added in the 1920-21 school year. The school had outgrown the facility by 1938 and a new building was constructed on a different site in 1939-40. Following completion of the new school building, the auditorium was occupied by a shirt manufacturer until 1964.From that time until its listing on the National Register, the building went through various periods of vacancy and occupation by a local furniture store for limited storage use.