Former School Building in Leesburg FL Slated for demolition 2024
Lee School, Leesburg Florida

The first schools in Leesburg were private institutions. A little log cabin at the site of Lone Oak cemetery was used at first, with a Miss Nellie Livingston and a Mr. Garrett as the first teachers. A later building was located where the present city hall now stands. The first floor was used as a school and for church services, while the second floor served as a Masonic lodge meeting hall. The first public school in Leesburg was established in 1889. There was no county or state money for building schools at that time. The citizens of the town purchased a brick building on 13th Street from the Florida Methodist Conference for $4,000.
Renewed prosperity in Lake County at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century prompted the County Board of Public Instruction to construct a series of centralized "modern" schools. Between 1914 and 1916 the building program produced schools in Clermont, Umatilla, Tavares, and Leesburg. Pupils in rural districts were transported to the larger schools where they could benefit from better facilities. Approximately $100,000 was expended by the county for the building and operation of schools during this period. The consolidation of schools meant that more money could be spent on fewer and more efficient facilities. In 1914, the old school on 13th Street in Leesburg was condemned, and $40,000 was appropriated to acquire a six acre site in town on which to build a classroom building and a separate auditorium. The building, designed to hold grades 1 through 12, was complete by the spring of 1915.
The south building housed all the grades until 1918, when further consolidation activity by the Board of Public Instruction prompted the construction of the north building. The structure was completed in 1923 and became the high school. More space was needed by 1926, so twelve rooms were added to the newer structure. Enrollment at Lee School, however, continued to grow so rapidly that overcrowding made it necessary to hold some classes in nearby churches. A new building to house the junior and senior high school students was constructed on 14th Street and opened in 1928. Until 1974, when the remainder of its students were moved to other schools in the community, Lee School operated as an elementary school. The school also served as a community center and a hurricane shelter. During World War II ration books were issued at the school, and the facility served as a day care center for children of mothers working in the war effort.
The erection of new schools in Leesburg during the 1950s and 60s permitted the transfer of the students at Lee School to newer facilities. For a time the buildings stood vacant, but in 1974, the complex became the home of the Lee Adult Education Center. The center provided citizens of Lake County who have not finished high school with the opportunity to obtain a diploma.
Demolition begins at abandoned historic school in Lake County 5/10/2024
Leesburg History
In 1849, Arthur Lee brought his family from Alabama to homestead in an area near Adamsville in Sumter County. His large family would form the nucleus of Leesburg, the oldest and largest city in Lake County. Other family members soon followed. In 1866, his relatives Evander and Calvin Lee opened a store on what was to become the main street of Leesburg. Evander's son, L.B. Lee, worked as a clerk in his father's store and built the first residence in the community, a log cabin that stood about a block east of the store. The lack of adequate transportation proved a problem in getting goods for the store. A boat line came down as far as Silver Springs, and Josiah Lee, another family member, who had established a cotton gin and grist mill at his place on Lake Griffin, trucked all goods from Silver Springs by mule-drawn wagons.
Calvin Lee met Colonel H.L. Hart in Palatka, a port community on the St. Johns River, and induced him to start a boat line from Palatka to Leesburg. A barge channel was cleared in the Oklawaha River, a tributary of the St. Johns, to Lake Griffin. The first boat docked at the newly named settlement of Leesburg on November 10th, 1867. Soon boats were carrying passengers and freight between Jacksonville, at the mouth of the St. Johns, and Leesburg.
Josiah Lee, who had been elected as a representative to the Florida Legislature, proposed that Sumter County should build a courthouse in Leesburg. In 1868, the commissioners authorized the purchase of a tract of land to be sold as town lots, retaining a site for the courthouse. In May, 1874, L.B. Lee sold 80 acres to the county for $500 cash, and Leesburg became the county seat. A wood frame courthouse was erected on a lot later occupied by a commercial building. In 1882, the county seat was returned to its original site of Sumterville.
A meeting of the entire population of 150 people in Leesburg was held on July 12th, 1875, where they voted for the incorporation of the community as a town. On May 27th, 1887, Lake County was created by the Florida Legislature from portions of Sumter and Orange counties. The town of Bloomfield was made the temporary county seat until an election could be held later in the year to choose a permanent site of the county government. The competition between Leesburg and Tavares was strong, but in the closely contested election Tavares came out the winner.
The earliest railroad in Lake County was the St. Johns and Lake Eustis which ran only from Astor to Fort Mason. In 1883, the Florida Southern Railroad Company began work to extend its line from Ocala to Leesburg, and on January 20th, 1884, the first train pulled into town. The company was taken over by the Plant System in 1895, and the line was extended to Tampa. The Atlantic Coast Line took control of the company after a few years and built a passenger station on Main Street. A second station was constructed on Palmetto Street a short time later by the Seaboard Air Line.
The old courthouse building in Leesburg was purchased by Dr. Josephus Anderson and moved to what is now South Fifth Street. The land on which it had stood was given to E.H. Mote in exchange for agreeing to build a hotel upon the property. The wooden building was the first boarding house in the town and eventually became an annex to a brick hotel.
The economic foundation of Leesburg in the late nineteenth century was, as it is today, the citrus industry. The growth of the community had been steady since its first days until the winter of 1894-1895 when two disastrous freezes destroyed the ripening crop of fruit and killed most of the trees. Thousands of trees were lost throughout the Florida citrus belt. Large numbers of residents in the affected communities, including Leesburg, abandoned their groves and businesses to seek employment elsewhere.
Some of the residents of Leesburg who decided to "tough it out" turned to the growing of other crops, creating truck farms producing lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons. Citrus trees were replanted, and within a decade citrus once again became a mainstay of the economy. The recovery was slow in coming but prompted a new round of construction in Leesburg by c. 1910. Both of Leesburg's banks had failed as a result of the freeze, but a new bank was organized in 1906, and in 1917 the Citizen's Bank of Leesburg became the first national bank to be formed in Lake County. Before World War I, Leesburg had acquired a centralized water system, an electric power plant, and some paved streets.
Architecture
Lee School is a significant visual and architectural landmark in Leesburg. The Colonial Revival and Gothic Revival styles gained favor for the design of educational institutions in America during the early part of the twentieth century as being emblematic of the classical and scholastic traditions in learning. The Colonial Revival style was also linked with America's national traditions derived in part from the architectural character of such early institutions as the University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson.
Schools constitute a building type of which few historic models remain in many parts of the country. In Florida, most communities initially built primitive wood frame schoolhouses, of which few have survived. As the importance of primary and secondary education became more apparent to the citizens of the state, most of these early buildings were demolished to make way for more permanent and efficient structures. Lee School shares the characteristics of many schools constructed throughout Florida during the 1920s. Usually, they were masonry buildings, two stories in height that displayed Gothic or Classical detailing.
There were also a substantial number of Mediterranean Revival-style schools, owing to the popularity of the style during the real estate boom period of the 1920s. The interior designs of the new schools reflected the latest and most "progressive" views on the proper designs for schools. The rooms were spacious and designed to admit generous amounts of natural light and fresh air. Central heating was installed, and the facilities had cafeterias, libraries, and auditoriums to provide an atmosphere conducive to learning and to insure the overall health and welfare of the children.
Lee School embodied at least some of these principles. It had separate classrooms for the different grades, an auditorium, a library, and offices for school administrators. Both natural and artificial lighting illuminated the major interior spaces, and large windows provided fresh air and helped cool the interiors of the buildings during warmer months. Both buildings had central heating, and all the classrooms had school desks, blackboards, and storage areas for school supplies and equipment. The original auditorium may also have done double duty as an assembly hall and school lunchroom, as did the cafetorium erected in 1962.
Building Description
Historic Lee School, located at 207 North Lee Street in Leesburg, Florida, comprises two Colonial Revival-style buildings constructed in 1915 and 1923. Both are two-story brick structures that front on Lee Street and share some similarities in style and decorative details. Both are rectangular plan, red brick buildings that rest on poured concrete foundations and have shallow-pitched hip roofs. The roofs have wide eaves and exposed rafter ends. Exterior decorative details are limited mainly to pilasters with concrete capitals and bases that flank the doorways and windows of the main facades of the buildings. Both buildings retain most of their original windows and interior finishes.
The main (east) facade of the south building is divided into three major bays, with a central recessed block flanked by two wings. The central section of the facade consists of eight bays, two of which are occupied by a two-story entrance pavilion. The main entrance stands at the head of a flight of concrete steps, flanked by solid concrete balustrades. The doorway is recessed into the entrance pavilion and consists of a single leaf glass and aluminum door framed by plate glass sidelights and transom lights. The door and window bays in the central block of the main facade are separated by brick pilasters with cast concrete capitals and bases. Pilasters on the entrance pavilion are found on both stories, being separated by a frieze with a rectangular recessed panel in its center. The other pilasters on the facade are two stories high and rise from the level of the window sills of the first story to the cornice level of the windows of the second. The major original fenestration in the building consists of wood frame pivot windows with 1/2/1 lights.
The wings each have three-bay facades. The first and second stories are separated by a frieze band bordered by concrete string courses. There is a granite string course that marks the juncture of the basement with the brick structure above. The sills of the windows on the first story rest upon a continuous string course, and all three string courses continue to the other elevations of the building. The south elevation of the building has a secondary entrance near its center that lies at the head of concrete steps similar to those found on the main facade. Above the entrance way on the second story is a metal emergency stairway. There is also an entrance way to the basement of the building located near the southwest corner of the elevation. The rear (west) elevation has an entrance that is sheltered by a flat roofed porch and reached by transverse steps leading to a high stoop. An elevator tower that provides access to both floors of the building is attached to the north elevation of the building. This elevation also features metal fire escape stairs, and there is a covered entrance way to the school basement similar to the one found on the south elevation.
The interior of south building contains most of its original hardware and finishes. However, a dropped ceiling has been added to allow the installation of air conditioning, and the original light fixtures have been replaced by florescent lighting units. The main entrance opens onto a short hall flanked by rest rooms and storage areas. This hall terminates at a transverse hallway near the school offices. The first floor contains four classrooms. These are found at the four corners of the building at the ends of the transverse hallway. Small foyers at both ends of the hallway contain secondary entrances and stairways to the second floor. These foyers are separated from the hall by glass brick walls. The second floor contains five classrooms, a library, teachers' lounge, and rest rooms.
Despite some similarities to the south building, the north building is distinctively different in many ways. The main (east) facade is asymmetrical, and the main entrance is not centrally located. A projecting entrance pavilion is flanked by two wings, the south one of which is two bays wide, whereas the north wing has four window bays. The structure rests on a low concrete foundation, so the main entrance stands at the top of a low stoop recessed in the entrance pavilion. The pavilion rises three stories, terminating in a hip roof dormer. Like the south building, the entrance is flanked by pilasters with concrete caps and bases, and there is also a frieze separating the first and second stories. A third set of pilasters frames the windows in the dormer on the main facade. The building has a hip roof with three hip dormers.
The main entrance has a double leaf wood and glass panel door surrounded by mullioned side lights and a transom. The major windows in the building are 12/1 light double hung wooden sashes. The windows in the facade dormer are 8/1 light sashes, while those in the dormers on the side elevations have 20 light pivot windows. The secondary entrances in the side elevations are set in shallow one-story pavilions. The one on the north elevation has a hip roof while the one on the south features a gable roof. A one-story ell is found at the northwest corner of the building. There is a metal stairway in the middle of the rear elevation that is sheltered by an extension of the eaves of the main roof.
The bay arrangement of the rear elevation is irregular, and a large area of the wall surface has been stuccoed. The appearance of this area reflects the removal in 1974 of the twelve room addition that had been constructed in 1926.
The north building contains even more of its original interior finishes than does the south building. Still evident is the richly decorated pressed metal ceiling, which features coffer panels and an ornate wall cornice. The building does contain modern florescent light fixtures, but these have been attached to the original ceiling. The main entrance opens onto a hallway that runs the length of the building. This is met beyond the midpoint by a shorter hallway, leading to the south exit of the building. A single stairway located just inside the main entrance connects the first and second floors. It is constructed of wood and has turned balusters.
The first floor contains three classrooms, two large ones on the north side of the main hall and a small one on the south. Entrance to the small classroom is gained via the shorter hallway, which also provides access to one of the two restrooms at the rear of the building. The second floor contains four classrooms, an office, and a restroom. One large classroom and the office lie on the south side of the main hall. The other three classrooms are accessed by a short transverse hallway running north from the stair landing area. The upper floor also has a restroom at the rear of the building.
An elevator tower was added to the north elevation of the south building to provide handicapped access, and dropped ceilings were installed to provide space for centralized air conditioning ductwork. The twelve rooms that were added to the rear of the north building in 1926 were declared structurally unsound and demolished in 1974 when the building became an adult education center. The separate auditorium that had been erected behind the south building was torn down in 1962 to make way for the cafetorium (combination cafeteria and auditorium) that still stands on the school property.
There are three additional buildings on the school property. One is the cafetorium, a one-story concrete block building with a flat roof and awning windows. The other two are portable wooden buildings that were set up on the property in 1990. Both have gable roofs and rest upon concrete block foundations. They are plain, rectangular structures with wallboard siding that have few defining details.

South Building, East Facade (1994)

South Building, Detail, East Facade (1994)

South Building, Detail, East Facade (1994)

South Building, South Elevation & East Facade (1994)

South Building, South & West Elevations (1994)

South Building, South Elevation (1994)

South Building, West & North Elevations (1994)

South Building, East Facade & North Elevation (1994)

South Building, Main Entrance Hall (1994)

South Building, 1st Floor Transverse Hallway (1994)

South Building, 1st Floor North Stairs (1994)
