Ortega Elementary School celebrates 100 years of educating students
From a one-story, Wood Frame Vernacular-style building, now a private residence, at 4280 Longfellow Street to the beautiful Mediterranean Revival-style school at 4010 Baltic Street, Ortega Elementary School has educated thousands of students living in Ortega and surrounding neighborhoods for a century. On Thursday, March 30, 6-8 p.m., the school will open its doors to all students, families, alumni and neighbors to experience “100 Years of Exhibiting Our Knowledge” including its annual Museum Night Exhibits, student performances and refreshments.
Ortega Elementary is a Museum Studies Institute, a magnet program. Museum Studies schools partner with museums and integrate course subjects, so students learn to create exhibits and art and write and research alongside traditional academic disciplines.
“The students work to create museum exhibits to go along with their units of study, and we transform the school into a museum twice each year,” said Shannon Rose-Hamman, who is in her seventh year as the school’s principal. “The students are trained to be docents and we invite families and community members to tour our museum every December and March.”
Beth Payne, Parent Association president, chose to send her children to Ortega Elementary because it reminds her of the school she attended on the eastern shore of Virginia.
“All of the teachers know my children’s names. It is a very close-knit, family environment,” she said.
In 1909, the Ortega Company, founded by John N.C. Stockton and Charles C. Bettes, began development of the Ortega subdivision, a streetcar suburb designed by the prominent architect Henry J. Klutho. He designed the community to include five circular parks named after New World explorers.
One of the largest and most architecturally elaborate non-residential buildings in the Old Ortega Historic District, Ortega Elementary School opened adjacent to Desoto Park and received its first students in 1923. For many years, the park served as the school’s playground. In 1950, the Ortega Company donated the western portion of the park to the Duval County Public Schools Board for use by the school.
Dekle Day, who still lives in Ortega, attended Ortega Elementary School from 1960 to 1966. He fondly remembers time spent on the playground.
“We had a football team. Can you imagine a bunch of elementary school boys in pads and playing tackle football today? The field also had a baseball diamond. It was a big deal for us guys to play the NAS Jax team,” Day said. “It was an idyllic setting. Most of us walked to school every day.”
Day’s two daughters finished at Ortega Elementary about eight years ago and are now in college. Day continues to maintain the Ortega Elementary School Alumni Facebook page.
Mostly neighborhood kids initially attended the school, although even in the ’60s, Day remembers 10 to 15 kids per grade, mostly from military families, who were bussed in from neighboring communities. When the school became a magnet school, it began to draw more students from surrounding neighborhoods.
Ortega’s first school, Public School 16, was constructed in 1914. Two teachers conducted classes for grades one through six in the spare, rectangular, wood frame building on a corner lot at Longfellow and Arapahoe avenues.
Just two years later, a neighborhood committee was formed to advocate for a new building. In 1923, a new school building was designed by architects Earl Mark & Leeroy Sheftall and built by P.J. McCullough to accommodate the neighborhood’s rapid growth because of the Florida Land Boom. A few years later, two classrooms were added along the Princeton Avenue wing of the main building. In 1935, a new auditorium with an entrance on Harvard Street was constructed. Two additional wings were added in 1950 and 1951 at the front of the building.
In 2004, Old Ortega was designated as an Historic District and added to the National Register of Historic Places. The school is noted as a contributing structure.
The May 2019 Riverside edition of The Resident News reported that the school board planned to demolish Venetia Elementary and then rebuild it with additional classrooms that would allow it to consolidate students from Ortega Elementary. The presentation then showed closing Ortega Elementary and demolishing it.
Jacksonville Daily Record reported on June 15, 2021, that the Jacksonville Historical Society has identified 22 endangered structures, including Ortega Elementary School and five other public school properties.
To learn more about the 100-year celebration, contact [email protected].
By Karen Rieley
Resident Community News
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