Hickory Hill Community Center in South Side is on its way to securing designation as a historic building.

The Virginia Board of Historic Resources has given preliminary approval to the application that two Richmond residents, the Rev. Monica Esparza and Eric Hunter, submitted seeking inclusion of the Richmond-owned center in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

The initial approval enables the Department of Historic Resources to work with the applicants to create a more detailed report and secure final approval.

The current building at 3000 E. Belt Blvd. dates to around 1938 and replaces a Black school complex that was destroyed by fire, the application notes.

Part of Chesterfield County before being annexed to the city in 1970, Hickory Hill was originally built in 1915 as an elementary school and became Chesterfield’s first high school for Black students by 1920, according to the application from Rev. Esparza and Mr. Hunter on behalf of the Hickory Hill Preservation Committee.

The school was known as the Hickory Hill Negro School and the County Training School for Negroes, the application states.

After the complex was destroyed, a future principal, James Spencer, and his wife, Evie, donated 2.5 acres to the county to provide space for the brick structure that offers varied youth and adult programs operated by the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities.

According to information provided to the board, a teacher at the school, Arthur Freeman, became the lead plaintiff in a civil rights suit in the 1940s that overturned the long-standing practice among Virginia school districts of paying Black teachers and principals less than their white counterparts.