Soldan International Studies High School

Soldan International Studies High School (also known as Soldan High School) is a public magnet high school in the Academy neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri that is part of the St. Louis Public Schools. Soldan was known for its wealthy and predominantly Jewish student population, from its opening in 1909. The student population underwent a rapid change in demographics, starting in the 1950s. It was predominantly African American by the mid-1960s. The school was renovated and reopened as a magnet school, with a focus on international relations, in the early 1990s. History Construction and early years The population of the city had increased to more than 575,000, by the end of the 1890s. The St. Louis Public Schools had operated only one high school since 1855. The school district built two new high schools in 1904, in order to meet the need for greater space for high school students. The district began building a fourth high school, three years later, which became Soldan. The school was known during its construction as Union Avenue High School. The school was renamed Soldan High School upon opening, in honor of Frank Louis Soldan, the superintendent of St. Louis schools from 1895 until his death in 1908. Land acquisition costs for the building were $10,000, and construction cost $630,000. William B. Ittner's design for the school received praise from the United States Bureau of Education for its attention to detail and to the needs of students It was designed to stylistically complement the nearby Clark School, which was designed in Gothic Revival style, with fittings and brickwork to suggest a Tudor period Gothic structure built in approximately 1620. With a capacity of 1,600 students, the building originally occupied an area of 288 by 256 feet and had three stories. The original design of the building had 41 classrooms, with 23 designed for 48 students and 18 for 35 students. The building's 18 science demonstration rooms and laboratories accommodated physiology, physiography, chemistry, botany, and physics, and in the basement, the building was designed with shops for woodworking, machining, and domestic science. The building also had four art rooms with skylights for studio work and three mechanical drafting rooms. The auditorium was the largest in the school system up to that time, with a seating capacity of 1,750, while the music room was built with a capacity of more than 300 students.