CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — A grand opening of a 129-year-old restored African schoolhouse at Faust Park Historic Village was held Saturday.

The one-room schoolhouse was built in 1893 after Black residents in the area sued due to there not being a school for Black children, according to a St. Louis County online article. 

More than a dozen students in first through eighth grade were taught by one teacher in the schoolhouse. 

At 19 years old, Chesterfield resident Doris Frazier was a substitute teacher at the schoolhouse.

“You had to be everybody,” Frazier said in the article. “You had to be the gym teacher, the arithmetic teacher, the reading teacher. So, you had to be kind of experienced in all of those classes to keep the kids interested. It’s a long, long day.”

The schoolhouse was in use until 1950 and is now the 20th building in the historic village at Faust Park. 

St. Louis County’s oldest surviving schoolhouse still has some of its original logs and bookshelves, among other fixtures. 

“Jesse Francis, cultural site manager at Faust Park, and his team have been meticulously disassembling, photographing, and tagging every inch of the wooden schoolhouse. When crews dismantled the schoolhouse, chalkboards still bearing math equations were found,” the article states.

The schoolhouse used to be located on private property off Wild Horse Creek Road and for almost 20 years, St. Louis County Parks officials had been trying to make an agreement with a previous property owner. 

After the property was sold, the new owner agreed to donate the building, according to the article. 

The cost to dismantle and relocate was $15,000 and the rest of restoration was about $20,000, paid for by the St. Louis County Parks Foundation.

“Putting a price tag on the old schoolhouse is tough to do,” St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page said in the article. 

“It will broaden the history of St. Louis County, presented at Faust Park. The 15 feet by 19 feet African American Schoolhouse is being built next to the Alt school, which was a school for white children. You can tell, just at a glance, the conditions in which children were taught based on race.”