University City High School is a large Art Deco school of tan brick trimmed in cast stone. Its central pavilion is fronted by three tall round-arched windows filled with radiating fan tracery, framed by fluted piers and crowned by an octagonal stone lantern carved with geometric and stylized-foliate panels beneath a shallow dome. The three entrances below carry incised mottoes — TRUTH·COURAGE·WISDOM, LETTERS·ARTS·SCIENCES, IDEALS·SERVICE·CHARACTER — over surrounds of carved fruit and rosettes. Red tile roofs cover the flanking classroom wings, their windows set in regular bays with stone spandrels beneath a corbeled cornice. A later curved glass curtain-wall addition wraps one end of the building.
University City High School opened in 1930, designed by Hugo K. Graf and Wilber Tyson Trueblood in an Art Deco style for the School District of University City. In 1985 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the University City Education District, a designation that also covered the nearby Jackson Park Elementary School and Hanley Junior High School. It continues to serve as the district's high school.
