Background
The Loudoun County Department of General Services solicited proposals from interested parties to serve as a resident curator for the historic Union Street School property under the terms of the county’s Resident Curator Program (RCP).
The two-story Union Street School, located at 20 Union Street, NW in Leesburg, is the first county property to be included in the RCP. It opened in 1884 as the Leesburg Training Center, which served Black students in elementary through high school at various times during its history. The school closed in 1958 after the opening of Douglass High School, the county’s first high school for Black students, in Leesburg, and the opening of a consolidated elementary school in Leesburg that served the county’s Black students. It is included in the listing of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources’ Historic African American Sites and the National Register of Historic Places.
For 60 years, the building served as a storage facility for Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) before it was declared surplus. LCPS transferred the property to the county in 2019, and in 2021, the Board of Supervisors created a project in the county’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) to rehabilitate the building. While the rehabilitation component of this project will be funded by the CIP; the curator will be responsible for the day-to-day operation, management, preservation and maintenance of the facility.
The curator selection process is an open and competitive process based on several criteria, including a commitment to the management and maintenance of the historic property, a use that is compatible with the nature of the property, and the resources, skills, and financial capabilities necessary to carry out the proposed curatorship.
