The expanded school now has 22 major buildings, including a football stadium, on a 116-acre campus south of Louisiana State University on Brightside Lane.

The 1838 Louisiana legislature passed an act on January 16, 1838, to provide state-supported education of deaf white children by enrolling them at other state schools.

As a result, 11 children from Louisiana were enrolled at state cost at the Kentucky School for the Deaf.

In 1852, Francis Dubose Richardson, a member of the General Assembly, introduced a bill to provide $25,000 and empowered a Board of Administrators to oversee the establishment of the Louisiana Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind.

The seven board members were authorized to buy land, make contracts, and do whatever was necessary to begin the school.

The board recruited James Smedley Brown from the Indiana Asylum of the Deaf and Dumb as superintendent.

It was described by the Daily Gazette and Comet on July 21, 1857, as "the proud monument to the Christian philanthropy of the Sugar Bowl State.

"[2] The school hired a woman teacher, and began to include vocational training as part of the program.

At the request of the school, the legislature appropriated funds for the purchase of a printing press and fonts.

As the fighting of the American Civil War drew closer to Baton Rouge during the Mississippi campaign, parents pulled their children out and only orphans remained at the school.

Principal Martin and matron Mary Dufrocq ran to the riverbank a half-mile away and begged the commander to stop shooting and save the school.

On October 15, 1869, a fire destroyed the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy at Pineville.

Major John Patton, professor of Greek at Louisiana State University, was appointed superintendent.

On taking office in 1885, he appointed Edith S. Rambo, who was trained at the Clarke School for the Deaf, as the first oral teacher.