Central School
Central is the large school building at the corner of Wesley and Clark Streets – just one block up from Florissant Road. The school was constructed in 1880 and is certainly one of the oldest continuously operating schools in Missouri. Currently, Central School serves pre-Kindergarten thru 2nd Grade students and their families. With around 20 classrooms, a Library, gym and cafeteria, it is a large building with large historic classrooms. To give a little more about the school, we will repeat a little of last month’s comments.
Ferguson established a public school system as early as 1867 with a 1-room building on Wesley Avenue near Florissant Road. By 1870 a second room was added. Then, the school was moved to a building (still standing and a private home) at what is now 110 South Clark. In 1880 a new building was built with 2 classrooms on the first floor and a village hall on the second – this was Central School. The original building is shown at the right (with newer additions darkened. The entrance to the building was on Wesley (as it currently is, but now in an early addition).
Central housed students from grades K through 10th Grade (2-year high school). In 1903 the School District of The City of Ferguson was established and the high school was extended to 12th grade (4-year high school). In both 1904 and 1908 additional classrooms were added to Central. In 1927 an elementary school was added on Chambers Rd., Griffith School (small frame building). By 1930 Central School was getting crowded with all 12 grades and only Griffith to take some of the load. A high school needed to be added and that school would be Vogt. In 1936 Vogt became a junior high as the new Ferguson High School (on January) was built. That building became Ferguson Junior High (now Ferguson Middle School) when McCluer High School was completed in 1962.
Throughout all these additions and the many more which would come later as Ferguson, Florissant, Kinloch and Berkeley School Districts eventually merged into the Ferguson-Florissant R-2 School District – Central has operated as a public School for over 145 years! The above view is from the parking lot behind the school. In this photo you can see the additions over the years. To the left is the gym, the area between the gym and the original building is an early addition (better seen from the Wesley side) and to the right is another early addition. If you look at the second photo in the article you can see the newest attrition to the right on that photo – the darker brick. The bell tower, on top of the original Central School has been a source of enjoyment for students over the years. Originally sounding the bell would announce that school was about to start and students had best hustle. While no longer announcing the start of school, I can remember that on special occasions, over the later years, select students were allowed to ring the bell. I did attend Central School for first and second grades.
This article was mainly about the physical building. In future months we will go into the history of Central School not as a building but has a story of a school – a place for human history.
If you have any stories about Central School – please pass them along using the e-mail address below. We will be happy to talk with you and record your experiences. Your stories could become part of our History House collection or in one of the future articles. Any stories or documents you might have of any historical place, event, or family in Ferguson is always welcome and we are prepared to do recorded oral histories at your home or at the History House.
Remember: History is yesterday but yesterday is only a blink away – today becomes history. We are also interested in what is happening just yesterday.
