Work is underway to fix up the historic school building that hosts the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center in St. Augustine. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on May 5, 2025 at 1:00 pm
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Thanks to more than $1 million in grant funding, the building that housed St. Johns County’s first high school for Black students is getting some much-needed fixes.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of when the first students started attending school at the later-renamed Excelsior High School in Lincolnville. Designed by prolific St. Augustine architect Fred Henderich, the school was integral for the education of Black youth in St. Augustine for decades until it closed in 1968.
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These days the school building houses the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center and offices for the St. Johns County School District. Grants have allowed the museum to buy a state-of-the-art new HVAC system, replace the roof and spruce up a performance and event space on the building’s second floor.
It’s been a long time coming, Lincolnville Museum Executive Director Gayle Phillips told Jacksonville Today.
The museum first received a grant to fix up the building several years ago.
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“By the time we were ready to start construction,” Phillips said, “we were right in the heart of COVID.”
That limited what they were able to do with the initial money, so a new infusion of grant funding from the Florida Department of State came just in time.
Once completed, Phillips said, the improvements will allow for the Lincolnville Museum to really home in on its mission of being a cultural hub.
The upstairs area at the museum has hosted concerts and other events in the past, but major improvements have literally raised the roof, installed a permanent stage and turned what was a somewhat cramped room into a true multiuse event space.
“It was all just makeshift,” Phillips said. “Now it’s going to be a planned space that will be functional in so many ways.”
She envisions hosting even more jazz concerts and other live performances that will bring a wider audience to the Lincolnville Museum.
The improvements are on schedule to finish in time for a celebration in June.
The museum’s Centennial Celebration will invite community members and former students back to the school for a Homecoming Field Day complete with outdoor activities and food trucks and a gala. The event will also feature speaker Playthell George Benjamin, an activist and commentator who attended Excelsior during the period when it was an elementary school.
A pillar of the community
Before the Excelsior school opened in 1925, the site where the school building still stands was multiple other education centers. When local leaders finally agreed to build a high school for Black students in Lincolnville, work on the Excelsior began, although its iconic name wasn’t part of the school’s identity immediately.
“(That) came a couple of years later, and the new name was put above the arch at the front of the building where you can still see it today, with the two “O”s in “School” interlinked — a feature I always point out when giving tours,” St. Augustine historian and activist David Nolan said.
As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that segregated schools violated the Constitution’s promise of equal protection, St. Johns County’s schools began to integrate. High school students who attended Excelsior moved to schools that were once segregated, and Excelsior became an elementary school until it closed in 1968.
When Nolan moved to St. Augustine in the 1970s, he became involved in opposition to a plan to demolish the school building and turn the area into a park. Local officials changed their mind on the plan when community activists, including people like former Excelsior Principal Solomon Calhoun, rallied to support saving the building.
The building operated predominantly as county office space for years until, in 2005, the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center opened in the former schoolhouse.
The school’s alumni and former staff members include people who played pivotal roles in the Civil Rights movement in St. Augustine and beyond. One of the original Freedom Riders, Henry Thomas, attended the school, as did local activists Henry and Katherine Twine and members of the Eubanks family.
