"Colored Schools": Virginia Avenue Elementary School

Other Name: Virginia Avenue Colored School; Virginia Avenue School; Carter Elementary School

Last Address: 3628 Virginia Avenue

Year Opened: 1915

Year Closed: 1970

Virginia Avenue School opened in a two-room portable frame building.  After Louisville passed the Million Dollar Bond Issue to improve city schools, a new brick school was opened in 1923.  Virginia Avenue received an addition funded by the Five Million Dollar Bond Issue, passed in 1925.  The school served as a refugee center in 1937 during the Ohio River flood.  Virginia Avenue was desegregated in 1956 and became Virginia Avenue Elementary.  The school's name was changed to Carter Elementary in 1970 to honor Jessie R. Carter, Virginia Avenue's first principal.  Carter vacated this building in 2001 when it moved to a new building on Bohne Avenue.  In 2005 it opened as a private free boarding school named the West End School.