McKinley High School's main facade is anchored by a projecting entrance bay flanked by two crenellated corner towers rising above the roofline. The building is faced in dark red brick laid in a diapered pattern, trimmed with cast-stone quoining, banding, and battlements. A Tudor-arched entrance beneath a projecting bay window marks the primary entrance on Russell Boulevard. The building sits on a rusticated limestone water table. It was one of two high schools William B. Ittner designed for the St. Louis Board of Education in the early 1900s, the other being Central High School (originally Yeatman).
McKinley High School was completed in 1902 and opened in 1904 as the first comprehensive public high school on St. Louis's south side. The school was named for President William McKinley, and its Tudor Gothic building gave its name to the surrounding McKinley Heights neighborhood. By June 1937, portable classrooms had been installed behind the building to handle enrollment, according to a Missouri History Museum photograph from that month. The St. Louis Board of Education closed McKinley as a traditional high school in 1988, transferring its freshman class to other schools. The building became a magnet middle school in the 1990s, then reopened as a high school in 2007; it graduated its first class under that configuration in May 2011. It currently operates as McKinley Classical Leadership Academy, serving grades 6 through 12 within St. Louis Public Schools. Alumni from its years as a traditional high school include professional wrestler Freddie Blassie, NFL players Jim Kekeris and Stillman Rouse, and basketball Hall of Famer Jo Jo White.
