Barrett Juvenile Correctional Center
The Barrett Juvenile Correctional Center, also known as the Barrett Learning Center and originally as the Virginia Industrial Home School for Colored Girls, was a juvenile correctional facility operated by the state of Virginia near Mechanicsville, Virginia. The facility was founded in 1915 as a facility for the detention and rehabilitation of African-American girls, and is notable for having the first African-American woman, Porter Barrett, to head such an institution. The facility was fully integrated by race in 1965, became coed in 1977, and then served an exclusively male population from 1978 until its closure in 2005. The campus has a collection of mid-20th century buildings designed by Richmond architect Merrill C. Lee, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
