Farragut School

A large three-story Ittner public school of red brick with cream terra-cotta trim, its long front broken by projecting brick-diapered gables and a tall central entrance pavilion. That pavilion is the showpiece: a two-story grid of windows framed in intricate cream terra-cotta of interlaced circles and rosettes, set over a richly ornamented doorway whose scrolled tablet reads DAVID G. FARRAGUT SCHOOL beneath a 1905 datestone. Bands of large classroom windows run between stone sills, and diaper-patterned brickwork fills the upper gables. The building sits behind a low brick wall and iron fence on a broad corner lot.

David G. Farragut School opened in 1905, one of the many St. Louis public schools designed by William B. Ittner during his long tenure as the Board of Education's Commissioner of School Buildings. It was named for David G. Farragut, the Civil War naval commander who became the first full admiral in the United States Navy. The school served the Greater Ville, a historically African American neighborhood on the city's near north side that grew alongside the adjacent Ville as a center of Black life, education, and enterprise during the era of segregation. St. Louis Public Schools later closed the building, and in recent years it was acquired by the Tabernacle Community Development Corporation for rehabilitation. A "Now Enrolling — Farragut Elementary" banner still hangs on its wall, a marker of its long service as a neighborhood school.