Courtesy of felicianaexplorer.com
In a town full of beautiful buildings, the Julius Freyhan High School might be the loveliest of them all—and the one with the most potential. On a little laneway off St. Francisville’s Royal Street, the old Julius Freyhan School building has stood largely vacant since the last students left in 1949. I say largely because long after the school closed, kids from the neighborhood found in the sturdy, echoing, three-storey structure an excellent place to play.
Nancy Vinci is a longtime St. Francisville resident who raised her children there in the sixties, and for a decade she has been spearheading the effort to restore the Freyhan building as a museum and cultural center for the town. When Nancy first got involved in preservation efforts, she climbed through the mazelike series of attic catwalks that affords access to the Freyhan building’s roof via a trapdoor and was amazed that she could see all the way to the Mississippi. “And I said to my sons, Lane and Baker, ‘Did you know that you can see all the way to the river from up on that roof?’ ‘Oh, Mom, didn’t you know?’ they replied, ‘That’s where we would spend all our time playing when we were kids!’”
Built with funds donated by Julius Freyhan, a wealthy Jewish merchant and philanthropist, the first Freyhan School opened in 1904, burned in 1905, and was rebuilt in its current form in 1907. What Freyhan built was a fifteen-thousand-square-foot, Federal/Georgian-style brick building with room for four classes of about twenty students in its high-ceilinged, first-floor classrooms. Outside there were stables so the students who rode to school would have somewhere to leave their horses, and a football field down below with an amphitheatre for graduation exercises that was built into the bluff wall itself.
Inside the school there was dark beaded wainscoting, tall windows, Romanesque woodwork flourishes, deep cloakrooms, and a beautiful pair of separated wooden staircases—one for the boys; one for the girls—leading to the second floor. Climbing these you arrived at what is surely the Freyhan school’s most impressive feature—a magnificent auditorium complete with pressed-tin ceiling, raised stage, footlights, and floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. Astonishing to encounter on this sleepy side street in St. Francisville’s historic district, this ballroom forms a spectacular centerpiece in a breathtaking building. Looking around, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see its potential.
Nancy Vinci certainly sees it. For years she and a dedicated group of supporters have been working to raise funds, not only to restore the Freyhan School’s physical presence, but also to develop a self-sustaining business plan to ensure it a viable civic and economic role. The appeal of the ballroom as a wedding, reception, and performance venue is easy to see. But the building could also offer inspiring studio space for visiting artists, event and conference facilities for a range of community activities, and a Jewish history museum to honor its founder.
And while it’s undeniably the centerpiece, the school itself represents only one part of a three-stage redevelopment plan. Stage one: Temple Sinai. Standing adjacent to the Freyhan School, St. Francisville’s tiny, original Jewish temple building has already been restored for use as an event facility hosting lectures, presentations and other small cultural events. The school is stage two. Stage three will be to restore the school’s original amphitheatre to serve as an outdoor venue for concerts and theatre performances.
Funding for the school building restoration has been included in state capital outlay funding this year. Private and corporate funds continue to be raised.That said, there’s still a long way to go before the school will be ready to host its first event.
So why talk about the project now? Because one of the compelling reasons to bring a historic landmark like this back into the fabric of community life is for the opportunity it represents to nurture culturally enriching events in a small-town setting.
In 2014, Country Roads is participating in one of these as a sponsor of the inaugural Walker Percy Weekend—a two-day literary festival celebrating the life and writings of the influential author and National Book Award-winner Walker Percy. Planned are a series of panel discussions with visiting scholars of Southern literature, readings, tours to visit sites described in Percy’s fiction, a gala dinner, and a historic porch tour and bourbon tasting inspired by Percy’s famous essay “Bourbon, Neat.” All proceeds support the Freyhan School restoration project.
More information about the Walker Percy Weekend is at walkerpercyweekend.org. Learn more about the Julius Freyhan School at freyhanfoundation.org.
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