St Agnes's School

St Agnes's School For Girls was founded by an English Governess in the last part of the 19th century. Her aim was to make it the foremost boarding school for educated young ladies in all of the South. Home to over 500 girls between the ages of six and sixteen, the massive, imposing brick-build building cut a striking silhouette against the city's eastern skyline for over fifty years before it was swamped by larger, newer buildings.

With long, snaking stairways that smell of resin and polished wood, long, stone-floored corridors that whisper indistinctly in the Louisiana thunderstorms, and high-ceilinged, cold classrooms filled with scarred wooden desks, the school was plagued by a series of tragedies throughout the late 1800's, and by the early 20th century, the school was all but deserted with less than a hundred pupils left.

However, the school was saved from destruction in the 1920's by a wealthy New London businessman who replaced the staff, renovated the building, and opened St Agnes's up to children of both sexes for the first time since it was built.

The school continued to prosper for nearly fifty years, at which point it was sold to the State who spilt the building in two and converted the old dormitories to allow St Agnes's to function as both a Junior High and High School.

Today, St Agnes's is the only major school in the city, and the large, crumbling building is often filled with the city's children, teachers, parents, and ringing school bells.