A three-story brick building of Italianate character, three bays wide above a raised stone basement. The windows are round-arched with stone hoods, and a bracketed cornice runs beneath the roofline. A low central porch frames a round-arched entrance at the head of a short stair, and a stone panel above the first floor reads SUMNER HIGH. A flagpole and an iron areaway fence stand at the sidewalk.
This building opened in 1868 as the Eliot School and became the second home of Sumner High School in 1895, when the city's only Black high school moved here from its first location at Eleventh and Spruce. Sumner had been founded in 1875 as the first high school for African American students west of the Mississippi River, named for the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner. The Fifteenth and Walnut building had no gymnasium, library, or assembly hall, and its downtown surroundings — saloons and pool halls — led parents to petition for a new school. Sumner left in 1910 for the purpose-built William B. Ittner building on Cottage Avenue in the Ville. It remained the only Black public high school in St. Louis until Vashon High School opened in 1927. This building should not be confused with the standing 1898 Eliot School (William B. Ittner) at 4242 Grove.
