Harris-Stowe
State University
Auditorium

3026 Laclede Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63103  
www.hssu.edu

The building at 3026 Laclede now occupied by Harris-Stowe State University was built in 1927 to house the Vashon Intermediate School, later to become the second black high school in the then-segregated St. Louis school system. The building was designed by Rockwell M. Milligan (1868-1929), a native of Canada who succeeded William B. Ittner as Commissioner of Buildings for the Board of Education. Milligan upheld the high standards for design, planning, and workmanship that Ittner had established. While this building displays all these qualities, the abstracted and stylized framing of the doors and windows is a surprisingly modern change from the rich Tudor and Renaissance detailing for which Milligan was better known. The lobby and auditorium were remodeled in 1988 to the designs of David Mason, with a clock employing the college seal on the balcony railing.

Harris-Stowe State University traces its origins back to 1857 when an all-white normal school was established, later to be named Harris Teachers College in honor of William Torrey Harris, nationally known as the progressive superintendent of the St. Louis schools and later U.S. Commissioner of Education. It was the first of its kind west of the Mississippi and one of the only teachers’ colleges in the country to be an integral part of a public school system. Also founded by the St. Louis Public School System was Sumner Normal School, established in 1890 for future black teachers of elementary schools in the City of St. Louis. It was later named Stowe Teachers College in honor of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the novelist and abolitionist.

The two schools merged in 1954, at first retaining the name Harris Teachers College but later changing it to Harris-Stowe College by popular request. The College moved to the present building in 1963. Harris-Stowe became a State College in 1979, and in 1981 received State approval for a new degree program, Bachelor of Science in Urban Education, the only program of its kind at the undergraduate level in the United States. Harris-Stowe was granted University status in 2005, and hosts collaborative graduate degree programs with the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

The Chamber Chorus presented the second of its concerts solely for women’s voices in the main auditorium on June 6, 1993.

Adapted from notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes
with additional information from Harris-Stowe
Photo by Roger Hill