The Missouri School for the Blind dates back to 1851, a time when St. Louis was a decidedly different place than today. In 1849, a devastating fire had consumed many downtown buildings, and a cholera outbreak claimed as much as a tenth of the settlement’s burgeoning population. There were few city services for trash or waste removal, and a thick haze hung over the city, the effect of factory pollution. Nonetheless, St. Louis in the previous half-century had grown into one of the largest cities in the country. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that despite many challenges, that the city was largely optimistic about its future place in the world.
Into this milieu, a group of private citizens came together imagining a better life for the state’s residents with visual impairment. The primary founders were Dr. Simon Pollak, a trailblazing ophthalmologist with European training in care for the blind, and Eli William Whelan, the former superintendent of the Tennessee Institution for the Blind and a blind man himself who had moved to St. Louis a year earlier. Along with more than a dozen clergymen and civically engaged businessmen, they established a fund that would support a charitable organization aimed at soliciting sustained financial backing from the state of Missouri. In their proposition to the state, Whelan was able to include documentation of his successes teaching two gifted Missouri students who were his first blind pupils after arriving in St. Louis.
In 1851, according to a written biography provided by the school’s current leadership, the school was granted $3,000 from the state per year for five years, provided its founders could raise $10,000 in private funds. Four years later, the school came under the state’s auspices.
By 1856, the school would move from its first location in a boarding house downtown, the first in a series of moves catalyzed either by space needs or student safety. As school leaders explained of one school building, by the 1890s, “The new Union Station was only six blocks away, and the train and traffic noise was so loud that students couldn’t hear their teachers in the classroom. Smoke and dirt increased, along with the population and train traffic, and students were confined to the school buildings for their own safety.” The school moved to its current location near Tower Grove Park in 1906, with a building designed by the legendary St. Louis Public Schools’ architect William B. Ittner. Though subsequent expansions now surround the original building, unfortunately hiding Ittner’s front facade, natural light continues to flood interior spaces owing to the genius of his layout.
Next year, the Missouri School for the Blind celebrates its 175th anniversary. A total of 45 students are now enrolled at the school, with another 50 families of pre-school aged children receiving resources and support. It also provides blind and visually impaired students in 300 school districts across the state with Braille and large-print textbooks and educational materials. The school says that about 30 students stay on campus Sunday evenings though Friday afternoons during the school year, going home to their families on weekends, holiday breaks, and summer break…