Attention, Class!
Do you sometimes dream about going to school again? Whether your own school memories are to behold or rather to forget, one thing is certain: if you were to attend an 18th-century school today, you’d be in for quite the shock!
Thankfully, here at Statesfarer, we’re all about turning your traveling dreams into reality – and time travel is a form travel, right? So how about a trip back about 300 years? Your destination: The Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse in St. Augustine’s Minorcan Quarter.
Located on 24 St George Street in St. Augustine, the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse is exactly what its name suggests: one of the oldest wooden school building in the United States. While its exact date of construction has been lost to history, the earliest records from 1716 show this structure to be as old as 300 years.
From the outside, the schoolhouse is a rather charming two-story structure built entirely with red cedar and cypress.
But it’s the inside that matters, right? And surely, what you’ll find inside the building should be quite drastically different from what modern schools provide. Classes took place on the ground floor while the Head Master lived on the upper floor. Working from home, 18th century style.
While rebellious students today are only punished by being given extra homework, reality for unruly students back in the day was very different. The “detention hall”, for example, is a clear cut reminder of this fact. What is the detention hall, we hear you ask? Well, it’s a dungeon under the stairs to the second floor.
If you choose to visit the the Schoolhouse you can take a self-guided tour through the property, with animatronics giving a brief overview of the school building’s history.
