Two Jefferson City properties have taken the next step to be named to the National Register of Historic Places.
Orchard Acres and Simonsen School were approved unanimously Friday morning by the Missouri Advisory Council on Historic Presevation without discussion.
The properties are now on the Missouri Register of Historic Places and nominated for the national list.
Orchard Acres, at 2113 W. Main St., served as a single-family home and the lab of Dr. Everett Sugarbaker.
Jacob Morris, of the State Historic Preservation Office, presented the property to the committee.
During his time in the home, starting in 1950, Sugarbaker conducted cancer research and experiments on the property while living there with his wife and three children.
"In Columbia, Missouri, the LSU Fisher Cancer Center was the first center west of the Mississippi," Morris said. "Dr. Sugarbaker was the first staff member there, so he was the first top tier wave of oncology to really do formal oncology in the state of Missouri."
The home itself was built in 1937 and includes roughly 13.5 acres of land, Morris said.
He said the home is an "elegant and restrained" style with a focus on symmetry.
"There are some examples of comparable properties, but there aren't quite as many as you'd see in a lot of other cities," Morris said. "There are some notable ones. Some of these are also on the National Register."
The second property, Ernst Simonsen High School, at 501 E. Miller St., was built in 1926 and last hosted students in May 2019.
Jane Beetem, of the State Historic Preservation Office, presented the property to the committee.
The school is the oldest remaining high school in Jefferson City and was one of the first two schools to racially integrate in 1954. It has had several additions over the years to add classrooms, the gymnasium and auditorium.
The Jefferson City School District voted in December to sell the vacant school to Allyn and Todd Witt, who want to develop it into a modern-style apartment building with historic elements.
Beetem said the building's architecture is mostly from the progressive era, which focused on safety.
In terms of education, the era also focused on more specialized classrooms for topics such as science, home economics and various workshops.
"Large windows were an important feature for schools," she said. "These provided plenty of natural light and ventilation for classrooms, which were aligned on the outer walls. This is important because diseases like tuberculosis were prevalent at the time."
The building was damaged shortly after it stopped hosting students in the May 2019 tornado.