“We accept and thank
you for this splendid building, a building no matter how large and important
this community may grow, will ever be the center of its social action and the
main cause of any progress we may make. The citizens of Davie
-
Charles A. Walsh
at the commemoration for the Davie School in 1918
Charles
Walsh built his home in the western frontier of South Florida in 1914, in the area
known as Zona. In May 1918, he commemorated the first schoolhouse in the newly
renamed settlement of Davie .
Today, his family home can be found just behind that same building—a
schoolhouse that has grown to encompass the history of the town that flourished
from the black muck of the Everglades. Eighty years after the school welcomed
its first students, the Davie School Foundation successfully rallied to protect
the invaluable community building from destruction and additionally preserved two
of the earliest residences, relocating them to the campus to avoid the imminent
threat of development. The ‘splendid building’ that is now the Old Davie
School Historical Museum amplifies and embodies Walsh’s counsel to ‘take
pride, maintain, and cherish’
In
the 95 years since its construction, the schoolhouse has functioned as a
classroom, town hall, dance hall, a refuge from floods and hurricanes, an
architectural triumph (with some of the first indoor plumbing around!), Broward
County School Board office space—almost a bus depot—and now a museum. As
students fill the hall and classrooms here once again, education remains at the
heart of the schoolhouse’s mission. The Old Davie School is not a dusty
bookshelf for the facts and figures of history, instead it is a vibrant and
dynamic mosaic of the contributions from those before us, present and still to
come. It provides a moment of
understanding that while our world continues to change, the values of our
community are still very much the same. It is a unique opportunity to identify
with our place in history as the school nears its first century and continues
finding purpose in our lives.
This
blog will work to illuminate the rich legacy of community in Davie by highlighting
the objects and stories contributed to and maintained by the museum. My hope is
to encourage conversation, ask questions, and invite new interpretations of our
past. So now it’s your turn—how have you experienced the town and the Old Davie
School?
