New A.G. Cox addition designed to match architecture of historic structure

WINTERVILLE — A school building where students were taught for nearly 90 years is gone from the Winterville landscape, but it is not forgotten.

Town, county, school and community leaders gathered May 15 to formally open a new administration building at A.G. Cox Middle School that is reminiscent of the structure built there in 1936. The event was a celebration of the completion of a $12 million school construction and renovation project that took three years to complete.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Pitt County Schools Superintendent Ethan Lenker said, referring to the project that was originally scheduled to take two years.

After having its start postponed for months in 2020, the project has experienced numerous setbacks and delays. Construction fell behind schedule in the spring of 2022, and the school district terminated its general contractor in June of that year.

Still, a new two-story addition, which includes science labs, a maker space and an art room, as well as a new media center, was completed in time for the beginning of the 2022-23 school year. The project brought the capacity of the school, located at 2657 Church St., from 800 to 950 students.

It also included the demolition of the school’s main entrance and a classroom wing. The building, which included the A.G. Cox administrative office, was one of the school district’s oldest structures.

Executive Director of Operations Aaron Errickson said an arched canopy at the front of the new school entrance is designed to match the architecture of the 1936 wing that was demolished. That is not the only feature designed as a type of memorial to the old building.

“We did save about 500 bricks from it,” Errickson said. “We’re going to be building a sitting wall for students and staff on the grass area next to the building.”

The school was named after Winterville’s founder, who also served as mayor and Board of Education chairman. It was known as Winterville Academy and later Winterville High School before becoming A.G. Cox Middle School. A school building erected around 1900 was razed in 1974, and two-story building near Sylvania Street, constructed in the 1920s, also was removed decades ago.

Jimmy Hite, president of Hite Associates architecture, said planning for the current renovations and additions started around 2008, although it would be more than a decade before work began. He said Pitt County Schools made the right decision in making improvements while keeping the school at its original location.

Still, doing so meant having to complete work in phases so that nearly 900 A.G. Cox students could continue to attend classes on campus.

“Coming out of COVID and building this building and having to juggle where the kids were,” Lenker said, “it just took a lot.”

A 26,000-square-foot, two-story classroom building was built first, followed by the renovation of a 12,000-square-foot existing classroom building and the construction of a new, 5,100-square-foot administration building.

“In comparison, South Central High School was built in 2000,” Hite said. “It’s a quarter million square feet. This project took almost twice as long.”

A.G. Cox Principal Norman McDuffie said the addition of a parking lot at the front of the school, which previously lacked on-site parking, has been a plus, and he has appreciated having everyone under one roof.

“It has been nice that once we go inside the building, we can actually stay inside the building,” he said. “It has been great for the staff as well as the students.”

Errickson said that with the latest project, A.G. Cox is essentially a closed campus, with students and staff being able to access offices, classroom space, the cafeteria and the gymnasium without having to go outside the building. The two remaining mobile units on campus are inside of a fenced area.

“At one point out here, there were 16 or 17 (mobile units),” Errickson said. “We’re down to two.”