The story behind our office building: J. Milton Turner School

We are proud to have our St. Louis office located in a building that has played an important role in American history and local St. Louis history as well.

Originally called the Meacham Park School, the J. Milton Turner school was named so in 1932. The building was opened in 1924 to address the inadequate educational resources for black students in the area and then expanded in 1937. With the New Deal in 1933, the school gained new sources of funding for growth. It eventually was brought to its current size in 1948. In 1950, Kirkwood parents filed a suit, along with many others across the country, to desegregate schools, which eventually lead to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

J. Milton Turner was a former slave, abolitionist, civil rights and black education advocate. He was appointed Ambassador to Liberia in 1871 by Ulysses S. Grant, and while working for the Missouri Department of Education, he founded over thirty new schools for African Americans and helped establish Lincoln Institute (now Lincoln University).

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, and was converted into office space named after J. Milton Turner in 2008. Today, the building houses many businesses and remembers the lives of the students and teachers of the school. Photographs and artifacts of the building are preserved in cases in the first floor hallway for public view and plaques tell a bit about the building’s history. We are proud to have Anda Creative located in such a historically significant spot.

For more information, you can check out the building’s website, come by for a tour, or watch a short documentary about the building’s history and revitalization:

http://turnerbuilding.com/historyofjmt.htm 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs6jFLZU4rs