Abandoned Elementary School in Saint Louis MO

Harrison School, St. Louis Missouri

Date added: September 10, 2023 Categories:

Southwest elevation from Green Lea Place (2006)

Harrison School, located at 4224 Fair Avenue in St. Louis, MO, is an example of the prototypical 19^th Century St. Louis elementary school design with modest Romanesque Revival features in its primary elevation. When constructed in 1895, Harrison School represented School Board Architect August H. Kirchner's interpretation of the mandated floor design set by the St. Louis Board of Education. With wide hallways and smaller classrooms, the original one-story building catered to the small number of children attending school in the Fairgrounds neighborhood of St. Louis, while implementing the requirements for increased light and air circulation. Additions to the top (1899) and rear (1909) of the building by Commissioner of Schools William B. Ittner, making it into the three-story building that exists today, are indicative of the increase in school attendance and the evolution of school architecture in St. Louis under Ittner's direction.

The Fairgrounds neighborhood takes its name from the old St. Louis Fairground Park, which is bounded by North Grand Boulevard, Natural Bridge Avenue, Fair Avenue, and Kossuthe Avenue. Subdivision of the area began in the early 1860s, and development north and west of the park became more rapid at the turn of the century. In 1895 Harrison School was constructed at 4163 Green Lea Place (the address has changed to 4224 Fair Avenue). As the population of the neighborhood increased Harrison School was altered to accommodate the increased number of pupils. The building served as a school in the St. Louis Public School System until 1995 when it was closed, and has remained vacant to the present.

When August H. Kirchner began working as an architect for the St. Louis Board of Education, strict parameters dictated the function and design of a school building. Rejecting the Lancaster model of education, in which a teacher could have a hundred students at all knowledge levels in one room, the 1857 St. Louis Board of Education selected a graded system that segregated students based on age and achievement. Superintendent Ira Divoll and William Torry Harris worked together to create an educational system and school design that would instill "discipline, life skills, and values as well as the mechanics of reading writing, and arithmetic" into the students' daily activities. The classroom could no longer be housed in any building that contained vacant space, but instead a school would be designed and constructed specifically for the purpose of education. The mandated model would consist of "uniform buildings for the graded system of education, which would contain twelve classrooms for about 700 students, with the lowest achievement on the first floor and the highest on the third."

These rules constrained the architects who worked for the St. Louis Board of Education until the turn of the century, including School Board Architect H. W. Kirchner. He and his brother, August produced many school buildings in the 1880s, all of which followed the mandated design. After his brother left St. Louis, August was selected as School Board Architect and designed several school buildings between 1891 and 1897. Recognizing the poor air circulation and lack of light available in the other mandated schoolhouses, Kirchner created new designs for his buildings that made them student-friendly. Some of Kirchner's inclusions were wide hallways with large windows at both ends, and smaller classrooms that would allow light to reach every desk, creating a more suitable work environment for pupils and teachers. Many of his buildings incorporated these elements, including Mt. Pleasant School (1896) and Grant School (1893).

By 1895 many of Kirchner's design elements were adopted by the St. Louis Board of Education as necessities in all elementary schools. In the 1895 Annual Report the Board explained that a school should be open to light and air from all sides, which would make a corner lot the most advantageous. A total of 176.6 cubic feet was to be allotted in each classroom per pupil, with the length of the room limited to 33 feet and the width 24 feet. In addition, a classroom was dictated to be no less than 12 feet high and have at least 1/3 of the wall space devoted to windows. Other regulations for stair height and floor materials were described as important parts in keeping a healthy and sanitary school.

Following these guidelines, August Kirchner designed Harrison School to serve the students of the Fairgrounds neighborhood in the central part of North St. Louis. Prior to Harrison, Ashland School, a six-room elementary school constructed in 1870, was the only school in the area and was constructed prior to the Fairgrounds neighborhood inclusion in the St. Louis City boundaries. Twenty-five years later, Harrison was constructed (for $14,000) as a four-room, one-story building with a foundation capable of supporting two additional stories. This forethought in designing the school to accommodate additional classrooms as the neighborhood's population increased probably saved he Board of Education an immense amount of money.

Harrison School contained the typical exterior elements found on many of Kirchner's buildings. Constructed in the Romanesque Revival style, the school incorporated Kirchner's signature buff brick triple arches with columns, sandstone belt courses and brick basement, though little decoration is featured on the remainder of the building.

In 1897 the Board of Education was significantly reorganized, and William B. Ittner was elected to be the first Commissioner of School Buildings. Ittner had attended public schools in St. Louis, understood their design flaws, and knew how to improve them. When asked to construct the addition to Harrison School in 1899, Ittner was restrained by the foundation from implementing a new design. His two-story $30,000 addition mimicked the layout of the first floor, but a rear stairwell increased the amount of light obtained by the hallways. Ittner included space for a principal's office and library on the supplementary floors, which had been absent in the previous building. The exterior of the building also reflected Kirchner's work, notably the location of sash windows with transoms and belt courses that replicated the positioning used by Kirchner.

As the first Commissioner of School Buildings, Ittner became a prominent architect in St. Louis and across the country. Designing buildings that discarded the design guidelines of the previous century, Ittner created fireproof buildings that allowed optimal light and air circulation in the absence of electricity, as well as encouraging learning. His designs incorporated the first indoor plumbing and ventilation systems in St. Louis schools, as well as changing classroom sizes and incorporating large kindergarten rooms. Though his first few schools repeated the elements of his predecessors, Ittner eventually altered the floor plan significantly, producing three well-recognized "open plan" designs that were modified as required by lot space or budget. These plans include the H-Shape, U-Shape, and E(Open)-Shape Plans, the latter becoming the "standard by which other schools in St. Louis were judged." His experiments in design significantly changed the structure of schools in St. Louis as he produced forty-nine public school buildings during his 17-year career with the School Board, and was copied by architects across the country.

In 1905 Governor Joseph Folk signed compulsory education into law, and forced the St. Louis Public School System to expand its facilities for the education of the additional 2,629 students who had not previously attended. Harrison School's 12 rooms grew increasingly crowded as enrollment quickly swelled to 501 students. Alleviating some of the congestion, Ittner constructed the Farragut School at 4025 Sullivan Avenue which could hold up to 1194 pupils. However, the continuing growth of the city left no choice but to expand Harrison School once again.

In 1909 Itter added a three-floor addition to the rear of the building. At a cost of $98,000" the "new building," as noted in the Annual Reports, mirrored the layout of the original structure, while implementing some atypical features. Created with rectangular classrooms, bathrooms on every floor, and a stairwell at the end of the corridor, the "new building" was conducive to foot traffic in hallways. Students no longer needed to walk to the basement (previously accessed only from the exterior) to use the restroom. Ittner also implemented a unique design for a kindergarten classroom on the first floor, which included two heptagonal bay windows on either side of a central fireplace.

In 1913 Ittner once again remodeled the Harrison School, this time eliminating the principal's office and library to incorporate a front stairwell. This new element not only complied with the fire code, but also allowed a cascade of light to pass farther down the hallways.

Building Description

Constructed in three main phases from 1895 through 1909, Harrison School is a three-story brick elementary school located at 4224 Fair Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. The south-facing building sits on the northeast corner of Fair Avenue and Green Lea Place. The brick and stone building has a raised basement and three floors of classrooms in two distinct segments linked by an enclosed stairwell. Harrison School is an intact representation of late 19th-century prototypical elementary school design in St. Louis, with modest Romanesque Revival architectural details in its primary elevation. The details include semicircular brick arches supported by stubby pilasters with simplified Corinthian capitals on the main entrance bay and multiple stone beltcourses. Other details include triple-grouped windows, radiating voussoirs (in the arches) and a massive stone keystone with the date, 1895, in raised letters. Architect August H. Kirchner designed the four room first floor of the original building in 1895. William B. Ittner added two floors in 1899 followed by a three-story addition at the rear in 1909. Except for some general updating and vandalism, Harrison School looks much as it did in the early part of the 20^th Century.

Harrison School encompasses the southwest corner of City Block 4897, bounded by Fair Avenue on the west, East Green Lea Place on the south, an alley on the east, and East Carter Avenue on the north. The property measures approximately 160' X 309', enclosed by an iron fence and a rear chain link fence, and bordered by concrete sidewalks. The site includes the main school building measuring approximately 80' x 176', including the 1909 rear addition, the metal name marker and an approximately 33,800 square foot asphalt play yard on the north and east side of the building. The surrounding area is comprised of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century residential and commercial buildings. When owned by the St. Louis Public School Board the building's address was 4163 Green Lea Place, but after it was sold the property's address was changed by the city to 4224 Fair Avenue.

Harrison School follows the footprint of the prototypical 19th-century elementary school, designed as an 80' x 76' square block with a 10' X 32' front projection containing the main entrance. The three-story rear addition is a slightly smaller brick cube measuring 76' X 80' with two heptagonal alcoves on the first floor. The addition is connected to the original building by a 36' X 20' corridor. The exterior walls of the original building are red brick with belt courses dividing each level. The rear addition is multicolored brick with a stone course separating the lower level from the upper floors, and protruding from the east side are two heptagonal projections. The low-pitched hipped roof is lined with stone coping.

The symmetrical primary facade faces southwest. The main entrance is centered on the three-story projection, and consists of two boarded doors with four single-pane windows in the transom, which rises to an eight-pane camber window. Squat stone pilasters hold the wide tan-colored brick arch above the central entrance. The date "1895" is inscribed in the keystone. The stone arches and squat columns are mimicked over the two double-hung sash windows with fanlight transoms that flank either side of the entrance. "HARRISON" and "SCHOOL" are etched in brick relief above the first-level windows. Thick belt courses are found below the first and second-level windows, creating a raised basement and denoting the separation between the original building and the 1889 addition. Two eight-pane windows fill the basement. The second and third level of the projection contain lighter brick quoined triple banded sash windows with transoms centered on the facade, with stone quoined sash windows with double pane transoms down either side. Flanking the projection on each floor is a group of three brick quoined windows. The second and third levels contain six-over-six windows, with a bricked lower sash resting just above the belt courses. Four-pane fixed windows rest above the third-floor windows and just below the roofline. The first level contains single pane triple hung windows. Twelve-pane windows break the raised basement. These are accented by gauged brick arches. A recessed stone plaque is located on the corner of the facade's western first floor.

The southeast and northwest elevations are identical, with a few variations.

The southeast elevation of the original building implements the design features of the main facade. Eight bricked windows fill the raised basement, which is separated from the rest of the building by a thick belt course. The first level contains four brick quoined double-hung windows with transoms on either side of a wide chimney. The chimney rises to the window sills of the second floor, with belt courses at the sill and lintel line of the first-floor fenestration. The second and third floor continue the fenestration spacing of the first floor, with eight brick quoined windows found in groups of four. These are

twelve-over-twelve pane double hung windows with two pane transoms on the second-floor, and four-over-four double-hung windows with two-pane transoms on the third. The northwest elevation of the original building mirrors the southeast elevation, though some twelve-over-twelve-pane windows can be seen on the third floor. Due to vandalism, some of the windows are missing from both elevations.

A stairwell was constructed at the rear of the building in 1899, when the second- and third-floors were added to the main building. Viewed from either the southeast or northwest elevation, the top two floors of this corridor are set back, containing paired four-over-four sash windows. The third-floor fenestration includes two vertically stacked two-light transoms above each window, while the second level only contains one. Two sets of paired metal doors are found on the first level, with ten light transoms above. A stone coped shed roof covers these doors. These entrances were added in 1909, when the rear addition was constructed. The entrances were previously flush with the rest of the corridor, containing paired wood entrance doors with a four-light transom and a four-over-four double-hung window to the northeast.

The corridor entrances are flush against the multi-colored brick 1909 rear addition. Six paired six-over-twelve wood windows fill the upper levels of the northwest elevation, with boarded windows in the red brick raised basement. Stone belt courses separate the first level from the basement below and the second-floor above. Four two-pane "lookouts" or transom lights are found at the stone coped roofline. The southeast elevation is similar to the northwest, though the basement and first level contain two heptagonal flat roofed 22' wide projections with boarded windows and six pane transoms.

The rear of the building is symmetrical and divided into three bays. The outer bays contain fifteen pane casement windows. The central bay contains a small brick projection that rises from ground level to the middle of the first floor. It is accented by a flat roof and paired metal entrance doors with ten pane transoms. Three twelve pane casement windows with six pane transoms rest just above the entrance projection. Extending from the second floor into the third are three twelve pane casement windows with two vertically stacked six-light transoms above each window.

The original building maintains the prototypical 19^th Century floor plan, with two 28' X 28' classrooms on either side of a 64' long corridor. The main entrance opens to a large vestibule with entry doors to the main hallway. The original wood doors open to large classrooms which still maintain many of the original features, including chalkboards, wood trims, wood windows, and hardwood floors. Archways open to wardrobes containing the metal hooks that were present at construction. Though new lighting has been installed, the ceiling height has been maintained.

Narrow stairwells separate the original building from the 1909 addition, with thick projecting walls creating a clear division between the two sections. On the east side of the addition is the kindergarten classroom. Accessed by a central door, the kindergarten is 76' x 40' including a wardrobe at the northern end of the room and two large bay windows. The room maintains its wood cabinetry, chalkboards, trim, ceiling height, wood windows, central fireplace, and wood floors. A sink was added to the workroom on the southern side of the room. When the building closed the kindergarten room was used as a lunchroom.

Across the hall is the principal's office, with the original trims and hardwood floors intact. The office consists of two long rectangular rooms connected by a central door. The rooms which house the principal's office were originally designed as a teacher's lounge and girls' bathroom. Beside the office on the west wall of the building is a 40' X 25' classroom that also maintains the original features found in the other classrooms. At the rear of the building is a large glass and wood entryway which accesses the rear stairwell. Stairs lead downward to a rear entrance and up to the second floor.

The second and third floors are nearly identical. The rear stairwell empties into the central corridor, with two 40' X 25' classrooms on the east and one on the west. The remainder of the west wall is occupied by the girls' and boys' restrooms and the nurse's office (which is a storage room on the third floor). Beyond the central stairwells are two 28' X 28' classrooms on each side of the corridor. The front stairwell on the south side of the building is accessed by glass and wood entrances. The stairwell was added in 1913, with the second floor originally designed to house a principal's office, and the third to be occupied by a library and store room. The rooms on these two floors also maintain the original elements found on the first floor, including wood trims, floors, cabinetry, doors, windows, and ceiling height.

The basement of Harrison School has a fairly open plan. The basement area of the original building contains two large store rooms and boys' and girls' bathrooms with a storage room between them. The rear addition contains a boiler room on the west side of a long corridor and a fan room on the east.