Navarro, Jose Antonio, Elementary School

The San Antonio Independent School District is the oldest and largest school district in the city. In 1890 a list of the ten schools in use included J.A. Navarro, making it one of the oldest in the district. This school is an excellent example of the Victorian-Italianate style traditionally used for the construction of the larger grammar schools in the era. It holds an important place in the history of education serving the needs of the changing community for almost a hundred years.

On June 30, 1885 the school board purchased a new school site at Pecos and San Fernando Streets, CB 305, Lots 1-3 4A-10A, 14-16. A short historical item appeared in the San Antonio Light in 1966 which referred to this. The original building erected on this site was a two-story stone structure of four rooms facing the six hundredth block of South Pecos Street. When completed, this buildings was called Jose Antonio Navarro Elementary School #8.

The addition of Bldg. 3 to Navarro School contained four rooms and was constructed of the same type building stone as the original building. The architects were Phelps and Shand, August 18, 1902 and the contract was awarded to Klauss and Witte on September 5, 1902.

Several other additions were made. The third wing (Bldg. 5) was a brick building having four rooms and a fourth addition (Bldg. 1) a long brick building fronting South Pecos Street consisting of seven rooms and an office space. The dates of these additions are unknown.

In 1923 a fifth addition, a separate brick building containing eight rooms was erected. This was called the "San Fernando Building" since it faced San Fernando Street.

In the spring of 1929, Mr. J.K. Harris, principal of Navarro, appeared before the Board of Education and recommended the purchase of the remainder of the six hundredth block of South Pecos Street. This north strip of property facing San Luis Street was purchased and ground was broken for the sixth addition to Navarro, an upper elementary school designed to accommodate the fourth, fifth and later the sixth grades. This brick building, connecting to the fourth addition, was completed in 1930 bringing the total number of classrooms to 33 contained in six rambling buildings considered permanent structures.

In 1910, Mr. W.J. Knox, principal of Navarro School, was instrumental in raising money to build a domestic science and manual training facility, one of the first in the city. In 1923, it was converted into three classrooms and by 1936, with the addition of two portable buildings of four rooms, Navarro had a total of forty rooms.

The prime reason for building the first structure of Navarro School in 1885 was to relieve the over crowdedness of Frank Johnson School #7. The second building was needed as a school facility for the Anglo population living within the vicinity of South Laredo Street. A photograph of a third grade class of Navarro School taken during the 1889-90 school year shows the class to be predominantly Anglo-American. The school continued to serve the Prospect Hill Anglo-American children until David Crockett School #11 was opened in 1894. The third and fourth additions to Navarro School met the needs of the increasing Latin American student population.

This school was named after an early Texas patriot, Jose Antonio Navarro. He was born in San Antonio, Texas on February 27, 1795, the son of Don Angel Navarro, a Spanish officer from the Isle of Corsica. At the age of ten, young Navarro was sent to Coahila, Mexico, for his early schooling. He later became a lawyer and a wealthy merchant.

Navarro was called the "Americanized Texan" due to his liberal ideas of government. He served several offices of honor for Texas during the time she belonged to Mexico and was appointed a delegate to the Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos where he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, and was elected as Bexar County's first representative to the First Congress of the Republic of Texas.

Jose Antonio Navarro died January 13, 1871