- City:
- Frontenac, MO
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Schools
- Designer:
- Robert Frances Denny
Description
Constructed with federal funding in 1935-36. The Wright school was initially in St. Louis County and was not affiliated with a school district, but then joined the Ladue School District. The Wright School was an elementary school for many years, but became the Ladue District early childhood center in 1982. The property is currently for sale.
Source notes
Site originally submitted by Charles Swaney on June 29, 2013.
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Doug Hartman
Joel Hoffman
I went there in the 1960’s it was a great school. It has since been bulldozed to make way for condos… the boast the tax base…..
I have many, many painful memories of this school. Sadly, my time there was one of the worst of my life. I spent nearly two score of my adult years learning to accept and absolve the psychological abuse and humiliation I suffered at this facility in the 1970’s both from the teaching staff and my fellow classmates. Strangely, as ridiculous as this may sound today, I believed that I had brought this upon myself as a young boy. It was only through forgiving myself that I was able to in turn forgive those with whom I had shared experiences at Wright school. In fourth grade, I finally acted out from my guilt, pain, and fear of this place and vandalized the school which only served to make this worse for me; I became even more of a pariah there after this led to the dismissal of an art teacher named Ms. Hogan who was a favorite of others. To this day, everyone I knew there simply abandoned any contact with me, deciding I must be a “bad apple” beyond salvation or redemption. I have no contact today with anyone from that period of my life. I have never felt comfortable in any academic environment since and I do my best to hide this reality from my children. In later school years I tried to escape this heavy emotional burden through self-medicating with drugs and alcohol which only made this worse and separated me from others to an even greater degree; this led me to treatment and recovery where I finally began healing from the trauma of my early childhood. I am certain that many of my fellow students will have fond memories of their time here as I recall I was one of only a few “example outcasts” that were treated this way and that other students seemed to flourish there. Although I feel understanding and compassion for those who might miss this place, I for one am glad that it’s only a memory now. It’s final demise is but a small relief from the poignancy of my recollections.
I went to Wright Elementary (4th through 6th grades) in 1956 thru 1958, I have very limited (but very fond) memories of the school and teachers and was happy to have found this site. I often wondered what happened to the school. The name of my 5th grade teacher was Marilyn Canter (sp??) and 6th grade was a man (don’t recall name). Fourth grade I don’t recall (my family had just moved to this area when I was starting 4th grade). I am now 76 years old and have lived in California since 1960. (I have a picture of my “12 year old self” sitting on the steps at the front of the school, but don’t know if I can find it). Wow, memories are sure flooding back as I type this …
Your six grade teacher was likely Mr. Ambrosius, a.k.a. “Mr. AM”.
I went to Wright School in the early 1980s (K-4 and then transferred to private school). I remember we paid for milk in advance for snack time and got a Milk Card which was hole-punched every time we got a milk. “Cowboy Sam” was the jungle-gym of which I used to sit in the front and pretend I was either flying or driving. I also remember playing Kickball on that huge asphalt area (Mrs. Norris was the PE Teacher). Art was in the basement (Mr. Munster??) And we would sled down the hill in the back which was pretty steep. I loved the pizza even tho it was square and soggy, and if you got Sloppy Joe on your face or hands it would turn it orange for the rest of the day no matter how much you tried washing it off. In 4th grade I started riding my bike to school on nice days (I lived near Conway & Spoede) which we locked up by the cafeteria.