Abandoned High School in Louisiana

Rayville High School, Rayville Louisiana

Date added: February 01, 2023 Categories: Louisiana School Classic Revival

The Rayville High School (1930) is a three-story brick neo-classical building with cast concrete details located on the edge of the town's old central business district. The site includes separate buildings for the gym and superintendent's office.

The otherwise basically plain building culminates in a neo-classical three bay central section that projects slightly. Its lower story is cast concrete as are the decorative details. The bays are defined by prominent Ionic pilasters. The central opening on the second story is a handsome round arch window with the muntins forming a tracery pattern. The use of a tower, in this case crowning the central section, is certainly not typical of the neo-classical style. Instead, it reminds one of the towers found above the parapet on Elizabethan country houses. The relatively small tower is richly ornamented in the neo-classical taste, including a round arch opening on each elevation accented with a keystone and impost blocks, pilasters with entablature blocks featuring sunbursts, and sunburst panels in the parapet. The front corners are defined by curving elements suggestive of volutes. The tower originally had a cupola. This feature was removed in the early 1950s.

The front entrance to the school is also elaborately detailed. Its bays are framed by Ionic pilasters with egg and dart molding. The entablature features a richly molded cornice, a dentil band and Chinese Chippendale fretwork in the frieze. Entablature blocks above the pilasters are accented with ovals. The transoms take the form of arcaded windows supported by reeded colonnettes. There is also a band of reeding below.

As originally built, the building's end sections, which are recessed, were only two stories. A third story was added c.1960. Other noteworthy exterior details include cast concrete belt courses below the first and second floor windows and one forming the architrave; bricks laid vertically above the windows and accented with a keystone (suggestive of a jack arch); and a cast concrete fountain with a shell pattern on each end of the building.

On the interior are plain classrooms of the period, featuring transoms above the doors and interior windows for ventilation. The only noteworthy interior space is a small entrance vestibule with a semicircular bay on each end and a Doric frieze. The building does not have an auditorium because there was one available at the nearby elementary school. A central staircase ascends from the lobby to the second floor. Corner staircases provide access to the third floor. Interior modifications have been minimal, consisting chiefly of the subdivision of three of the large rooms located at the ends of the building. (The dividing walls are identical to the original.)

To the rear of the high school, and connected to it by original covered walkways, is the contemporaneous gym. The building has gable parapet end walls and round arch windows accented with keystones and impost blocks. It was increased in size by about 40% in the early 1950s, duplicating the original brick and detailing. But for a faint line in the brickwork, one would never know. Also, an addition has been made to each of the building's original small one story wings.

On the west side of the school is a 1938 brick bungalow-looking cottage known as the Superintendent's Office. It is identified on Sanborn Insurance Maps as "classroom and office."