Three stories of red brick above a raised basement of rough-faced limestone, the two materials interlocking along a toothed line where they meet. Corbelled sawtooth brick courses band the walls below the roofline, and the gable ends are filled edge to edge with diamond-patterned diaper brickwork under stone coping, each pierced by a round-arched attic window divided by a slender stone colonette. Square towers with arcaded openings and hipped roofs anchor the ends of the long Tenth Street elevation. Round-arched entrances are set into the limestone base, their tympana laid in diagonal brick lattice studded with recessed circular bosses.
Patrick Henry School opened in 1906 to a design by William B. Ittner and takes its name from Patrick Henry. It has operated continuously as part of the St. Louis Public Schools and is now Patrick Henry Downtown Academy, serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Photographs held by the Missouri History Museum record its routines across the middle of the twentieth century: graduating classes assembled on the auditorium stage in January 1933, 1935, 1938 and 1943 and in June 1942, the school graduating cohorts twice a year; patrol boys in December 1954; a dramatics group in October 1955; physical education classes in the gymnasium in March 1966; and a school nurse at work in June 1967. In June 1943 the gymnasium was given over to stretcher-bearer training. Interior views made in November 1938 show the corridors, a classroom and the auditorium. The Cochran Gardens public housing high-rises stood immediately east until their demolition; the mixed-income Cambridge Heights development occupies that ground now.
