The Ridgeley School opened in 1927 as Colored School No.1 in Election District 13 in the African American community known as Ridgeley. Named for a prominent local African American family, it joined a church and society hall as a focal point of the community. The school received a Rosenwald Fund grant and was one of nearly 5,000 schools built for African American children in the South. Established by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald in 1917, the fund followed educator Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee model of self-help and supported improved vocational education for agriculture and industry in a segregated society. It provided seed money for school construction, while the local African American community supplied the rest through tax revenue, cash, and in-kind donations. The Ridgeley School is one of the best examples of a Rosenwald School in Prince George's County, and of the county's 27 Rosenwald Schools, it is one of nine that remains. Originally the school had two large classrooms, each serving at least three grades, a central passageway, and an entrance flanked by two cloakrooms; by the 1950s a third classroom had been added. It educated African American children in the central section of the county until it closed in 1954, the same year the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The site was later used as a special education center, administrative offices, and a school bus lot for the Prince George's County Public School System. Restoration began in 2009, preserving many of the school's original architectural features.