Caroline Brevard Grammar School (Bloxham Building)

The Caroline Brevard Grammar School in the 700 block of South Calhoun Street has stood since 1925, making it the oldest school in the city.. Now known as the Bloxham Building, the two-story, Mediterranean Revival style brick building is topped by clay roofing tiles. Not many other buildings in Tallahassee are of this architectural style. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, it is significant for its association with the noted Southern architect, William A. Edwards, and for its design. It closed in 1959 and was sold to the State of Florida. The building currently houses a number of offices related to Leon County education and community services, including the Records Department and Americorps Tallahassee.

Funds of $150,000 were allocated in 1923 to build a new school to serve White students from kindergarten through sixth grade. Four lots in the original plan of the City of Tallahassee were purchased for the school building. The noted architect, William A. Edwards of the firm Edwards and Sayward, promised to design a modern and scientific building. Edwards was the lone architect for Tallahassee's Florida State University from 1907 to 1925, and also designed the Exchange Bank building in town, as well as many buildings at the town's Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.

The new school was named for Caroline B. Brevard, a teacher and author who was born in Tallahassee in 1860 and passed away there in 1920. Brevard taught in Leon County schools and Florida State College for Women. She penned a history of Florida and several text books. The Brevard Grammar School housed the first consolidated school in Leon County. The school was built for segregated education of the White population, in an era when schools for Blacks in Leon County were mainly one-room, rural buildings.

Kindergarten classes were discontinued at Brevard Grammar School in 1941 because public kindergartens had been established. The school was plagued by several issues, according to a 1947 study: streets with dangerous traffic, two state office buildings built nearby, a playground that was too small for its 550 students, and an aging physical structure and infrastructure. The neighborhood was losing school-aged children in a move to expand the city to the northeast. The school board decided in 1958 to sell the school building to the state for office space for $490,000, and the school closed for good in June 1959.

In December 1964, the offices of the State Road Department vacated the building and it was sold to the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions of the State of Florida for over two million dollars. The building's name was changed in 1966 to the Bloxham Building, after William D. Bloxham, who served as governor from 1881 to 1885 and from 1897 to 1901. The building still contained state offices in the late 1980s when it was nominated to the National Register.

In its first six decades, the school was altered a few times. A two-story wing measuring 60 by 39 feet was added in 1961 and was clad in stucco. All of the original white wooden windows have been replaced with black metal-framed windows. A handicapped ramp and a loading dock were added and a ventilation unit on the roof was removed in the late 1940s to late 1950s.

The Bloxham Building, Tallahassee Daily Photo. February 26th 2019. Accessed November 27th 2020. https://tallydailyphoto.blogspot.com/search?q=Bloxham+Building

R. Douglas, Jr. Wolfe, Lea. NRHP Nomination of Caroline Brevard Grammar School. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1987. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/87002151.