VIAC Storytelling Digital Archive

This lesson explores the history of Christiansted High School during its years in the Old Danish Military Barracks on Hospital Street. Rather than presenting a traditional school history, the lesson uses the barracks as a material witness to examine the many ways this single building reflected the changing history of the Virgin Islands.Throughout the chapter, students move through several connected stories, including education before emancipation, educational reform after emancipation, the establishment of the Territory’s first public high school, the broader debates surrounding vocational and academic education, the role of Governor Paul Martin Pearson, the Great Depression, and how the barracks itself was transformed from a colonial military structure into a center of learning.