Arlington School Listed in National Register of Historic Places
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| Arlington School C. 1930 (SLPS Archives) |
May 6, 2008
Arlington School was listed in the National Register on April 19, 2008. The school is historically significant for its association with master architect William B. Ittner, and was listed under an earlier multiple-property nomination entitled The St. Louis, Missouri, Public Schools of William B. Ittner.
Ittner designed Arlington around an earlier eight-room school in the winter of 1898, months after being appointed Building Commissioner by the St. Louis Board of Education. Though Arlington contains an earlier building constructed in stages by architects Thomas Furlong, Charles Ramsey, and August Kirchner, Ittner's 1898 reconstruction and expansion nearly absorbed the earlier building entirely; only a small portion of the original school is visible at the northwest corner of the property.
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| Arlington floorplan, pre-Ittner sections shown in color |
Through his re-invention of Arlington, Ittner gave voice to his early ideas regarding the specialized form and function of proper school design. He converted the building from an expedient aggregation of functional rooms, to the theoretically driven progenitor of his early H-plan schools. The H-Plan was the first tentative step in what became a lifelong journey of constant study, experimentation, construction, and evaluation that culminated in the "open plan" E-plan school. In all Ittner designed nearly 500 school buildings in the United States and 40 (from start to finish) in St. Louis, receiving both national and international acclaim. Interestingly, Arlington may be Ittner's first major work for the St. Louis Board of Education. Arlington's building permit was issued in March of 1898, which predates his other early works like Monroe (permit issued in May of that year), Elliot (permit issued in September) and Jackson (permit issued in November). There is some question about whether Sherman School pre-dates Arlington. This issue may never be resolved because the school's building permit is missing. While Sherman's age cannot be directly ascertained, it is worth noting that Arlington was considered a more urgent need on the list of projects assigned to Ittner upon the start of his career as Commissioner of School Buildings.
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| North elevaton, earlier school shown at lower right |