The Cherokee Junior High School
555 South Eola Drive
The Great Florida Land Boom of the 1920s brought thousands of new residents to Orlando, increasing the city’s population three-fold between 1920 and 1930. By 1921, the effect on the city schools was already evident, with a 40 percent increase in school enrollment in just one year. The Orlando Sentinel announced in a headline on October 7, 1921, that the city “Outgrows School Buildings Fast As Completed.” By the decade’s end, the school board had built eight new schools, among them the Cherokee Junior High School, which opened in 1927.
The school board specifically wanted to locate a school in the southern residential district around Lake Cherokee, first considering property owned by Harold Bourne, before settling on two lots in Block 6 of the F. T. Poynter Addition to Orlando, for which they paid $120,000. With only three residences and two owners for 3.27 acres of land in a choice residential area, the property suited the requirements for the new junior high school. The board planned to move the three residences on the site to nearby lots for eventual rental to school teachers.
Bruce and Elizabeth Compton, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned Lot B and one of the houses, while Mrs. Mattie L. Smith owned most of the larger Lot C and two houses located there, including her family home at 529 South Eola Drive. Mrs. Smith reserved her right to remove landscaping and citrus fruit from her premises within six months of the date of the sale. Her houses were moved to become 621 and 623 Palmer Avenue and remodeled into apartments, known for several years as “the Teacherage”. Compton’s large house on Lot B was moved a few feet east and turned to face Summerlin Avenue, where it became the Manual Training Center for the new junior high school.
Architect Howard M. Reynolds drew the plans for the school building and the Peterson Construction Company won the contract to build it with a low bid of $304,500. Construction began in August 1926, at South Eola Drive and Palmer Avenue. Reynolds designed the two-story building around an open court, where he put its steam heating system. Intended to accommodate one thousand students, the school included an auditorium to seat the same number of people. The auditorium occupied a major part of the first floor, along with a cafeteria, and offices. In a separate structure, between the main building and Summerlin Avenue, a gymnasium featured locker rooms for both sexes.
The following year, the Orlando Sentinel pronounced the nearly-completed Cherokee Junior High one of the “finest and most magnificent” schools in the South. The paper characterized the Mediterranean Revival construction as a blend of Moorish and Spanish architecture, with colorful, decorative terracotta features.
Eighty-five years later, in his blog, Transformations and Whispers, John A. Dalles found the Cherokee School “wonderfully whimsical,” and an “architectural treasure” incorporating Art Deco and Prairie Style influences, as well as Classical. Most notably, he saw the work of the Renaissance sculptor, della Robia reflected in the colorful terracotta “festoons, keystones, and swags.” He pointed to the “stylized owls” topping the columns, “symbolic of wisdom” as appropriate for a school. Dalles praised Howard M. Reynolds, one of several architects working to create a distinctive Florida architectural style, for his success with the Cherokee School.
Reynolds became the County School Board’s choice for school construction after a 1922 conflict between the Local Trustees for Orlando’s School Taxing District Number 1, which had little if any authority, and architect F. H. Trimble, the designated architect for the Orange County School Board, who designed and built Delaney Elementary school in 1921 and a new high school on Magnolia Street in 1922. The controversy, ostensibly over safety issues, dragged on into 1923. Meanwhile, Howard Reynolds designed and built the new Jones High School in 1922. Trimble began accepting design work out of the area and Howard Reynolds, evidently on the strength of his Jones High School work, designed the Marks Street School in 1925, as well as six other 1920s-era school buildings, including the Cherokee Junior High.
Six years after the Cherokee School opened to junior high students living south of Central Avenue, controversy developed again. In their efforts to renegotiate bonds to shift money from paying for real estate to paying teachers during the Great Depression, school attorneys determined that the purchases of property for the Cherokee School were illegal and that no more payments should be made on those properties. In the frenzy of the Land Boom, the urgent need for land for school construction resulted in the Local Trustees overlooking the legal process for acquiring property. Once the trustees made their choice of land, they should have informed the county board, who would turn the matter over to the county commissioners, who would call a special election of freeholders. The process had not been followed, and the board argued that the money used for interest and note payments on the properties for the Cherokee School could legally be used to pay teachers’ salaries.
Seven people held notes on school property purchases in Orlando, for a total of $226,250. In the case of the Cherokee Junior High property, Mrs. Mattie Smith held the largest note, for $50,000. Mrs. Smith agreed to take negotiable paper of $42,000 value in return for the notes on the property. She also agreed to reduce the interest rate to the school board from eight to six percent. The other major note holder, Bruce L. Compton, sued to recover $15,000 principal and interest yet due on the site of Cherokee School. Compton admitted that he had little chance of getting any more money and requested the return of his land. The school board asked to have the suit dismissed, arguing that Compton, who had received $15,000 at purchase, plus interest on the additional $15,000, should return the money before he asked for his property back.
The Cherokee School, no longer a junior high school, remains a part of the Orange County Public School system. Students and teachers come and go, passing the owls Howard Reynolds designed nearly a century ago to symbolize learning and wisdom. The Compton and Smith houses are no longer on the school property, and cars park on the large open space at the corner of South Eola Drive and Palmer Street that probably started as a playground or sports playing field. The structure itself, though, appears as beautiful as ever, and in 1981, the Lake Cherokee Historic District became Orlando’s second locally designated historic district, with the Cherokee School its most architecturally significant institution. The school’s future may be uncertain, however. In 2016 the school board announced coming changes in the program housed at the Cherokee School, but provided no definite decision about the school or any timeline for making such a decision.
Tana Mosier Porter
2019
The Cherokee Junior High School
555 South Eola Drive
The Great Florida Land Boom of the 1920s brought thousands of new residents to Orlando, increasing the city’s population three-fold between 1920 and 1930. By 1921, the effect on the city schools was already evident, with a 40 percent increase in school enrollment in just one year. The Orlando Sentinel announced in a headline on October 7, 1921, that the city “Outgrows School Buildings Fast As Completed.” By the decade’s end, the school board had built eight new schools, among them the Cherokee Junior High School, which opened in 1927.
The school board specifically wanted to locate a school in the southern residential district around Lake Cherokee, first considering property owned by Harold Bourne, before settling on two lots in Block 6 of the F. T. Poynter Addition to Orlando, for which they paid $120,000. With only three residences and two owners for 3.27 acres of land in a choice residential area, the property suited the requirements for the new junior high school. The board planned to move the three residences on the site to nearby lots for eventual rental to school teachers.
Bruce and Elizabeth Compton, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned Lot B and one of the houses, while Mrs. Mattie L. Smith owned most of the larger Lot C and two houses located there, including her family home at 529 South Eola Drive. Mrs. Smith reserved her right to remove landscaping and citrus fruit from her premises within six months of the date of the sale. Her houses were moved to become 621 and 623 Palmer Avenue and remodeled into apartments, known for several years as “the Teacherage”. Compton’s large house on Lot B was moved a few feet east and turned to face Summerlin Avenue, where it became the Manual Training Center for the new junior high school.
Architect Howard M. Reynolds drew the plans for the school building and the Peterson Construction Company won the contract to build it with a low bid of $304,500. Construction began in August 1926, at South Eola Drive and Palmer Avenue. Reynolds designed the two-story building around an open court, where he put its steam heating system. Intended to accommodate one thousand students, the school included an auditorium to seat the same number of people. The auditorium occupied a major part of the first floor, along with a cafeteria, and offices. In a separate structure, between the main building and Summerlin Avenue, a gymnasium featured locker rooms for both sexes.
The following year, the Orlando Sentinel pronounced the nearly-completed Cherokee Junior High one of the “finest and most magnificent” schools in the South. The paper characterized the Mediterranean Revival construction as a blend of Moorish and Spanish architecture, with colorful, decorative terracotta features.
Eighty-five years later, in his blog, Transformations and Whispers, John A. Dalles found the Cherokee School “wonderfully whimsical,” and an “architectural treasure” incorporating Art Deco and Prairie Style influences, as well as Classical. Most notably, he saw the work of the Renaissance sculptor, della Robia reflected in the colorful terracotta “festoons, keystones, and swags.” He pointed to the “stylized owls” topping the columns, “symbolic of wisdom” as appropriate for a school. Dalles praised Howard M. Reynolds, one of several architects working to create a distinctive Florida architectural style, for his success with the Cherokee School.
Reynolds became the County School Board’s choice for school construction after a 1922 conflict between the Local Trustees for Orlando’s School Taxing District Number 1, which had little if any authority, and architect F. H. Trimble, the designated architect for the Orange County School Board, who designed and built Delaney Elementary school in 1921 and a new high school on Magnolia Street in 1922. The controversy, ostensibly over safety issues, dragged on into 1923. Meanwhile, Howard Reynolds designed and built the new Jones High School in 1922. Trimble began accepting design work out of the area and Howard Reynolds, evidently on the strength of his Jones High School work, designed the Marks Street School in 1925, as well as six other 1920s-era school buildings, including the Cherokee Junior High.
Six years after the Cherokee School opened to junior high students living south of Central Avenue, controversy developed again. In their efforts to renegotiate bonds to shift money from paying for real estate to paying teachers during the Great Depression, school attorneys determined that the purchases of property for the Cherokee School were illegal and that no more payments should be made on those properties. In the frenzy of the Land Boom, the urgent need for land for school construction resulted in the Local Trustees overlooking the legal process for acquiring property. Once the trustees made their choice of land, they should have informed the county board, who would turn the matter over to the county commissioners, who would call a special election of freeholders. The process had not been followed, and the board argued that the money used for interest and note payments on the properties for the Cherokee School could legally be used to pay teachers’ salaries.
Seven people held notes on school property purchases in Orlando, for a total of $226,250. In the case of the Cherokee Junior High property, Mrs. Mattie Smith held the largest note, for $50,000. Mrs. Smith agreed to take negotiable paper of $42,000 value in return for the notes on the property. She also agreed to reduce the interest rate to the school board from eight to six percent. The other major note holder, Bruce L. Compton, sued to recover $15,000 principal and interest yet due on the site of Cherokee School. Compton admitted that he had little chance of getting any more money and requested the return of his land. The school board asked to have the suit dismissed, arguing that Compton, who had received $15,000 at purchase, plus interest on the additional $15,000, should return the money before he asked for his property back.
The Cherokee School, no longer a junior high school, remains a part of the Orange County Public School system. Students and teachers come and go, passing the owls Howard Reynolds designed nearly a century ago to symbolize learning and wisdom. The Compton and Smith houses are no longer on the school property, and cars park on the large open space at the corner of South Eola Drive and Palmer Street that probably started as a playground or sports playing field. The structure itself, though, appears as beautiful as ever, and in 1981, the Lake Cherokee Historic District became Orlando’s second locally designated historic district, with the Cherokee School its most architecturally significant institution. The school’s future may be uncertain, however. In 2016 the school board announced coming changes in the program housed at the Cherokee School, but provided no definite decision about the school or any timeline for making such a decision.
Tana Mosier Porter
2019
The Cherokee Junior High School
555 South Eola Drive
The Great Florida Land Boom of the 1920s brought thousands of new residents to Orlando, increasing the city’s population three-fold between 1920 and 1930. By 1921, the effect on the city schools was already evident, with a 40 percent increase in school enrollment in just one year. The Orlando Sentinel announced in a headline on October 7, 1921, that the city “Outgrows School Buildings Fast As Completed.” By the decade’s end, the school board had built eight new schools, among them the Cherokee Junior High School, which opened in 1927.
The school board specifically wanted to locate a school in the southern residential district around Lake Cherokee, first considering property owned by Harold Bourne, before settling on two lots in Block 6 of the F. T. Poynter Addition to Orlando, for which they paid $120,000. With only three residences and two owners for 3.27 acres of land in a choice residential area, the property suited the requirements for the new junior high school. The board planned to move the three residences on the site to nearby lots for eventual rental to school teachers.
Bruce and Elizabeth Compton, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned Lot B and one of the houses, while Mrs. Mattie L. Smith owned most of the larger Lot C and two houses located there, including her family home at 529 South Eola Drive. Mrs. Smith reserved her right to remove landscaping and citrus fruit from her premises within six months of the date of the sale. Her houses were moved to become 621 and 623 Palmer Avenue and remodeled into apartments, known for several years as “the Teacherage”. Compton’s large house on Lot B was moved a few feet east and turned to face Summerlin Avenue, where it became the Manual Training Center for the new junior high school.
Architect Howard M. Reynolds drew the plans for the school building and the Peterson Construction Company won the contract to build it with a low bid of $304,500. Construction began in August 1926, at South Eola Drive and Palmer Avenue. Reynolds designed the two-story building around an open court, where he put its steam heating system. Intended to accommodate one thousand students, the school included an auditorium to seat the same number of people. The auditorium occupied a major part of the first floor, along with a cafeteria, and offices. In a separate structure, between the main building and Summerlin Avenue, a gymnasium featured locker rooms for both sexes.
The following year, the Orlando Sentinel pronounced the nearly-completed Cherokee Junior High one of the “finest and most magnificent” schools in the South. The paper characterized the Mediterranean Revival construction as a blend of Moorish and Spanish architecture, with colorful, decorative terracotta features.
Eighty-five years later, in his blog, Transformations and Whispers, John A. Dalles found the Cherokee School “wonderfully whimsical,” and an “architectural treasure” incorporating Art Deco and Prairie Style influences, as well as Classical. Most notably, he saw the work of the Renaissance sculptor, della Robia reflected in the colorful terracotta “festoons, keystones, and swags.” He pointed to the “stylized owls” topping the columns, “symbolic of wisdom” as appropriate for a school. Dalles praised Howard M. Reynolds, one of several architects working to create a distinctive Florida architectural style, for his success with the Cherokee School.
Reynolds became the County School Board’s choice for school construction after a 1922 conflict between the Local Trustees for Orlando’s School Taxing District Number 1, which had little if any authority, and architect F. H. Trimble, the designated architect for the Orange County School Board, who designed and built Delaney Elementary school in 1921 and a new high school on Magnolia Street in 1922. The controversy, ostensibly over safety issues, dragged on into 1923. Meanwhile, Howard Reynolds designed and built the new Jones High School in 1922. Trimble began accepting design work out of the area and Howard Reynolds, evidently on the strength of his Jones High School work, designed the Marks Street School in 1925, as well as six other 1920s-era school buildings, including the Cherokee Junior High.
Six years after the Cherokee School opened to junior high students living south of Central Avenue, controversy developed again. In their efforts to renegotiate bonds to shift money from paying for real estate to paying teachers during the Great Depression, school attorneys determined that the purchases of property for the Cherokee School were illegal and that no more payments should be made on those properties. In the frenzy of the Land Boom, the urgent need for land for school construction resulted in the Local Trustees overlooking the legal process for acquiring property. Once the trustees made their choice of land, they should have informed the county board, who would turn the matter over to the county commissioners, who would call a special election of freeholders. The process had not been followed, and the board argued that the money used for interest and note payments on the properties for the Cherokee School could legally be used to pay teachers’ salaries.
Seven people held notes on school property purchases in Orlando, for a total of $226,250. In the case of the Cherokee Junior High property, Mrs. Mattie Smith held the largest note, for $50,000. Mrs. Smith agreed to take negotiable paper of $42,000 value in return for the notes on the property. She also agreed to reduce the interest rate to the school board from eight to six percent. The other major note holder, Bruce L. Compton, sued to recover $15,000 principal and interest yet due on the site of Cherokee School. Compton admitted that he had little chance of getting any more money and requested the return of his land. The school board asked to have the suit dismissed, arguing that Compton, who had received $15,000 at purchase, plus interest on the additional $15,000, should return the money before he asked for his property back.
The Cherokee School, no longer a junior high school, remains a part of the Orange County Public School system. Students and teachers come and go, passing the owls Howard Reynolds designed nearly a century ago to symbolize learning and wisdom. The Compton and Smith houses are no longer on the school property, and cars park on the large open space at the corner of South Eola Drive and Palmer Street that probably started as a playground or sports playing field. The structure itself, though, appears as beautiful as ever, and in 1981, the Lake Cherokee Historic District became Orlando’s second locally designated historic district, with the Cherokee School its most architecturally significant institution. The school’s future may be uncertain, however. In 2016 the school board announced coming changes in the program housed at the Cherokee School, but provided no definite decision about the school or any timeline for making such a decision.
Tana Mosier Porter
2019
The Cherokee Junior High School
555 South Eola Drive
The Great Florida Land Boom of the 1920s brought thousands of new residents to Orlando, increasing the city’s population three-fold between 1920 and 1930. By 1921, the effect on the city schools was already evident, with a 40 percent increase in school enrollment in just one year. The Orlando Sentinel announced in a headline on October 7, 1921, that the city “Outgrows School Buildings Fast As Completed.” By the decade’s end, the school board had built eight new schools, among them the Cherokee Junior High School, which opened in 1927.
The school board specifically wanted to locate a school in the southern residential district around Lake Cherokee, first considering property owned by Harold Bourne, before settling on two lots in Block 6 of the F. T. Poynter Addition to Orlando, for which they paid $120,000. With only three residences and two owners for 3.27 acres of land in a choice residential area, the property suited the requirements for the new junior high school. The board planned to move the three residences on the site to nearby lots for eventual rental to school teachers.
Bruce and Elizabeth Compton, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned Lot B and one of the houses, while Mrs. Mattie L. Smith owned most of the larger Lot C and two houses located there, including her family home at 529 South Eola Drive. Mrs. Smith reserved her right to remove landscaping and citrus fruit from her premises within six months of the date of the sale. Her houses were moved to become 621 and 623 Palmer Avenue and remodeled into apartments, known for several years as “the Teacherage”. Compton’s large house on Lot B was moved a few feet east and turned to face Summerlin Avenue, where it became the Manual Training Center for the new junior high school.
Architect Howard M. Reynolds drew the plans for the school building and the Peterson Construction Company won the contract to build it with a low bid of $304,500. Construction began in August 1926, at South Eola Drive and Palmer Avenue. Reynolds designed the two-story building around an open court, where he put its steam heating system. Intended to accommodate one thousand students, the school included an auditorium to seat the same number of people. The auditorium occupied a major part of the first floor, along with a cafeteria, and offices. In a separate structure, between the main building and Summerlin Avenue, a gymnasium featured locker rooms for both sexes.
The following year, the Orlando Sentinel pronounced the nearly-completed Cherokee Junior High one of the “finest and most magnificent” schools in the South. The paper characterized the Mediterranean Revival construction as a blend of Moorish and Spanish architecture, with colorful, decorative terracotta features.
Eighty-five years later, in his blog, Transformations and Whispers, John A. Dalles found the Cherokee School “wonderfully whimsical,” and an “architectural treasure” incorporating Art Deco and Prairie Style influences, as well as Classical. Most notably, he saw the work of the Renaissance sculptor, della Robia reflected in the colorful terracotta “festoons, keystones, and swags.” He pointed to the “stylized owls” topping the columns, “symbolic of wisdom” as appropriate for a school. Dalles praised Howard M. Reynolds, one of several architects working to create a distinctive Florida architectural style, for his success with the Cherokee School.
Reynolds became the County School Board’s choice for school construction after a 1922 conflict between the Local Trustees for Orlando’s School Taxing District Number 1, which had little if any authority, and architect F. H. Trimble, the designated architect for the Orange County School Board, who designed and built Delaney Elementary school in 1921 and a new high school on Magnolia Street in 1922. The controversy, ostensibly over safety issues, dragged on into 1923. Meanwhile, Howard Reynolds designed and built the new Jones High School in 1922. Trimble began accepting design work out of the area and Howard Reynolds, evidently on the strength of his Jones High School work, designed the Marks Street School in 1925, as well as six other 1920s-era school buildings, including the Cherokee Junior High.
Six years after the Cherokee School opened to junior high students living south of Central Avenue, controversy developed again. In their efforts to renegotiate bonds to shift money from paying for real estate to paying teachers during the Great Depression, school attorneys determined that the purchases of property for the Cherokee School were illegal and that no more payments should be made on those properties. In the frenzy of the Land Boom, the urgent need for land for school construction resulted in the Local Trustees overlooking the legal process for acquiring property. Once the trustees made their choice of land, they should have informed the county board, who would turn the matter over to the county commissioners, who would call a special election of freeholders. The process had not been followed, and the board argued that the money used for interest and note payments on the properties for the Cherokee School could legally be used to pay teachers’ salaries.
Seven people held notes on school property purchases in Orlando, for a total of $226,250. In the case of the Cherokee Junior High property, Mrs. Mattie Smith held the largest note, for $50,000. Mrs. Smith agreed to take negotiable paper of $42,000 value in return for the notes on the property. She also agreed to reduce the interest rate to the school board from eight to six percent. The other major note holder, Bruce L. Compton, sued to recover $15,000 principal and interest yet due on the site of Cherokee School. Compton admitted that he had little chance of getting any more money and requested the return of his land. The school board asked to have the suit dismissed, arguing that Compton, who had received $15,000 at purchase, plus interest on the additional $15,000, should return the money before he asked for his property back.
The Cherokee School, no longer a junior high school, remains a part of the Orange County Public School system. Students and teachers come and go, passing the owls Howard Reynolds designed nearly a century ago to symbolize learning and wisdom. The Compton and Smith houses are no longer on the school property, and cars park on the large open space at the corner of South Eola Drive and Palmer Street that probably started as a playground or sports playing field. The structure itself, though, appears as beautiful as ever, and in 1981, the Lake Cherokee Historic District became Orlando’s second locally designated historic district, with the Cherokee School its most architecturally significant institution. The school’s future may be uncertain, however. In 2016 the school board announced coming changes in the program housed at the Cherokee School, but provided no definite decision about the school or any timeline for making such a decision.
Tana Mosier Porter
2019