Stoddard School

By 1930 the school had been converted to an African American school and renamed Banneker — the second building to bear that name, inheriting it from Colored School No. 5 at Montgomery and Leffingwell. By the late 1930s Banneker was severely overcrowded, serving some 1,477 students. In May 1938 the St. Louis Board of Education approved a new $300,000 school building on the same site, partly funded by a Public Works Administration (PWA) grant and the remainder from a 1934 bond fund. Demolition of the Stoddard buildings began March 28, 1939. The Victorian building visible in the June 1936 MHS photograph is this Stoddard/Banneker structure, photographed three years before its demolition.