If architect William Ittner designed Lyon like a castle, then Euclid School in Fountain Park was crafted like one of the city's German breweries, a towering structure of deep red brick and Romanesque columns. Opened in 1890, the school was designed by German American August Kirchner. It's been closed since 2007.
On an overcast afternoon, a cold wind blows against a small tour group assembled beneath the round Roman arches at Euclid's grand entryway. Inside the darkened hallways, they take careful, crunching steps over the piles of paint flakes and pieces of the ceiling. They peer at event flyers and homework assignments still pinned to bulletin boards.
Among them is 18th Ward Democratic Committeewoman Yolonda Yancie, who attended Euclid through second grade in the early 1980s. To her surprise, she still remembers the way to her old kindergarten classroom.
"Oh my god," she says, stepping into the blue-painted room. She walks over the glass-strewn purple carpet to the curved wall of windows overlooking the schoolyard where she learned to play double dutch at recess.
"I remember the circle room," she says. "Ms. Valentine was my favorite teacher. She set the groundwork for who I am today. That's how I knew exactly where to come."
It's not just the memories of a beloved former teacher that strike Yancie; it's remembering that this kind of neighborhood school has all but disappeared in St. Louis. "It's really not fair," Yancie says. "It's the community that sets the tone for the children."
Euclid is among seventeen buildings currently on the SLPS list of surplus properties. At a time when ten more schools may soon be shuttered, it serves as an example of what happens to the body of a structure whose bones are approaching a state of terminal decomposition.
Despite the building's age and how long it's been closed, Kevin Bryant, of Kingsway Development, comes away from the tour with optimism. He envisions turning the building into senior apartments, a form of affordable housing that would open opportunities for tax credits and other incentives.
"The biggest thing this Euclid is suffering from is a roof," Bryant observes. "The roof is going to do what a roof does after years of neglect, but roof aside, I'm a fan of the architecture. Just the strength of that building."
Euclid isn't part of Bryant's major project one mile to the south along Delmar Boulevard. There, the developer has spent years assembling land and financing for an $84 million project that seeks to connect a corridor of ignored north-city neighborhoods to the thriving Central West End.
Weeks after the tour, in a follow-up interview, Bryant confirms that he has signed a contract on the school. A school redeveloper would be something of a fitting role for Bryant, who as a child attended University City's Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary, the same school Masiel and Screaming Eagle recently converted to loft apartments.
Turning Euclid into apartments would be Bryant's first school redevelopment. After that first tour, he returned for more exploratory trips through its hallways and descents into its dark basement, finding the boiler room and "little hidden passages where they delivered coal."
"It's just rock solid. You just don't see this kind of construction and architecture anymore, no one can even afford it," he says. But it's more than just the building's strength and potential for what preservationists call "adaptive reuse." There's sadness, too, he points out, in seeing the physical epilogue to the long decline of St. Louis' educational system.
Like Lyon and Sumner and the others slated for closure, these schools represent an inheritance left to rot. Behind the beautiful architecture, buildings that were intended to preserve the best of the previous century are doomed to stand abandoned, monuments to monumental loss.
"This is the kind of structure where we committed our children. It was just that important an institution in our community," Bryant says of Euclid.
"And now," he adds, "it's a ghost town."
Update: During a December 15 meeting of the St. Louis Public School Board, members voted to delay a vote on the proposed school closures until January 15.
