Saint Paul's College is a private, historically black college located in Lawrenceville, Virginia. The college is a four-year, private, co-ed, liberal arts institute affiliated with the Episcopal Church. Saint Paul’s eleven-building campus is situated on 185 acres (0.75 km) of green hills. Older buildings were constructed by students and donated by friends of the College. Some of the college's older buildings have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On September 24, 1888, James Solomon Russell of the Protestant Episcopal Church founded the Saint Paul Normal and Industrial School, with fewer than a dozen students. The school was intended chiefly to develop African American teachers, one of the most critical and prestigious jobs in the late 19th and early 20th century South. Although nearly 30,000 teachers had been put into schools in the South by 1900, the need was critical to double that number in order to reach parity in a segregated system with the proportion of teachers serving white students. In 1941 the name of the institution was changed to Saint Paul’s Polytechnic Institute, when the state granted the school authority to offer a four-year program.