Caudill Rowlett Scott (CRS), of Houston, Texas, emerged in the 1950s as one of the nation's leading designers of schools. Designing in a thoroughly modernist idiom, they pioneered the concepts of dispersed buildings in a campuslike setting, the open classroom, and programming. For Charlottesville, they provided two similar middle schools. Walker Middle School and Buford Middle School (1965–1966), 9th Street SW, are similar in the use of a Miesian IIT idiom: exposed steel columns and beams, brick wall infill, and elegant minimalist detailing. The interiors were originally open plan, but that scheme has vanished with new concepts of schooling.