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Rochelle School

City/Town:
Location Class:
Built: 1885 | Abandoned: N/A
Historic Designation: National Register of Historic Places
Status: AbandonedPrivate Property
Photojournalist: David Bulit

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Students and teachers at Martha Perry Institute, 1901. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida.

The community of Rochelle was originally known as Perry Junction, named after Governor Madison Starke Perry who owned land and a plantation there. Later, it became known as Gruelle, named after a railroad surveyor. During this time, Rochelle became a hub for the Florida Southern Railway whose narrow gauge line was built from Palatka and Gainesville to Ocala via Rochelle. Rochelle was later on the mainline of the Plant Railway System being the daily stopover between Jacksonville and St. Petersburg. According to Mike Woodfin of Ghosttowns.com, during the mid-1880s, Rochelle had about 175 residents and a hotel, two churches, two schools, plus a cotton and grist mill. By 1888, 24 trains passed through daily.

The town’s demise came in 1895 during the Great Freeze which decimated much of Florida’s citrus crops. This caused many settlers and most tourists to abandon the area and settle further south. Not much remains of the once-thriving community.

One of the original schoolhouses is still standing. First built-in 1885 as the Martha Perry Institute, the building stands on land which was donated in 1889 by Sallie Perry, daughter of Governor Perry, to A.F, Zetrouer and T.F. Kennedy, the school trustees, for a “white public and private school lot.” The Rochelle school conducted classes until 1935 when it closed down.

The building today is privately owned and kept in extremely good shape. The school bell and many of the original desks are stored inside the building. On April 2, 1973, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

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The Rochelle schoolhouse has been preserved throughout all these years
Bullet

David Bulit is a photographer, author, and historian from Miami, Florida. He has published a number of books on abandoned and forgotten locales throughout the United States and continues to advocate for preserving these historic landmarks. His work has been featured throughout the world in news outlets such as the Miami New Times, the Florida Times-Union, the Orlando Sentinel, NPR, Yahoo News, MSN, the Daily Mail, UK Sun, and many others. You can find more of his work at davidbulit.com as well as amazon.com/author/davidbulit.

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