Mitchell School

Jules Leffland was a Dane, born in 1854 and trained in Copenhagen, who reached Victoria in 1886. By 1910 he had reportedly designed at least eighty buildings, and he worked in Cuero, Wharton, Beeville and Kingsville as well as here. Neoclassical Revival was his favorite. In Victoria the Vandenberge House of 1908 on North Vine Street is his grandest Colonial Revival house, a lawyer and banker's home with a colossal Ionic portico. He also drew the Victoria Colored School of 1901, on Convent Street. He died in October 1924, and his son Kai kept the practice going.

What the plaque says

Mitchell School The citizens of Victoria voted to establish an Independent School District in an 1898 election. Immediate plans called for the building of eight schools: four for Anglos and four for African Americans. In 1901 school trustees hired prominent local architect Jules Leffland to design two buildings,and this site was acquired for the first Anglo high school. Named Central High School, it was completed in 1902. After secondary school students were reassigned to the new Patti Welder High School in 1918, the school at this site was renamed Third Ward School and served elementary grades. The name was changed again in 1922 to honor J.D. Mitchell (1848-1922), one of the school district's first trustees and a former city council member and state legislator. Leffland's imposing 3-story school building suffered major damage due to fires in 1935 and 1943, resulting in the removal of the third floor. Additional alterations occurred over the years to meet the changing needs of the facility. Although no longer in use as an elementary school, Mitchell School continues to serve as an educational center, housing classes of the Mitchell Guidance Center. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.2 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.5 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Memorial Square — steps away
• Victoria County — steps away
• Viola Case — steps away
• Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church — steps away