The Good Old Days: Freedom Magazine Presents The History of Clearwater, Florida Part IV

South Ward School: America’s Oldest

That same year, the population swelled to 1,500 and Clearwater residents enjoyed the town’s first restaurant that served full meals 24 hours a day—for a quarter.

South Ward School
The South Ward School, built in 1912, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is America’s oldest public school still operating continuously in the same building.

While that restaurant no longer exists, another structure built in 1912 still stands: the South Ward School. Originally constructed on 1906, the school soon needed to be expanded as Clearwater experienced its growing pains.

School officials toured schools around the nation to ensure the new facility at the South Ward School had the most up-to-date equipment. Today, South Ward Scholl is listed in the National register of Historic Places and is America’s oldest public school still operating continuously in the same building.

The spirit of the times was one of strong family ties, a spirit captured in a letter to Freedom magazine by Mrs. Jess Wilder Thacker, an attorney and a third generation Floridian. As she described it, “My father, then an attorney in Clearwater, during April 1914, drove my mother, very pregnant with me, through the woods from Clearwater to Brooksville, so that I could be born in my mother’s family home, still a very large home on Brooksville Avenue.”