Lindsay School of the Arts Fort Pierce St Anastasia
By PATTIE DURHAM
If these walls could talk is an oft-used phrase regarding quondam buildings and the St. Anastasia Schoolhouse in Fort Pierce is no exception. It has been more than l years since the laughter of children and the joy of learning, mixed with the corrections from teachers, were heard in its halls and classrooms.
If the optimistic plans of Cindy Bridges, president and managing director of Lindsay School of the Arts, come up to fruition, these walls once again will be ringing with the joyful sounds of children in its classrooms. In a unique partnership with the City of Fort Pierce, Bridges has signed a 20-year lease, with the possibility of a 10-year extension, permitting her to apply for grant funding and to seek donations for the expected $iv million renovation of the more than 100-twelvemonth-quondam construction.
Lindsay School of the Arts was opened in 2017 in Fort Pierce. Bridges and her husband, Dorrian, founded the schoolhouse, which is named later on her lifelong friend, Lindsay Pashkow, who died at historic period 21 of a brain aneurysm. Bridges, a graduate of Treasure Coast High School, grew upwards in Port St. Lucie across the street from Lindsay and the 2 quickly became best friends.
"Lindsay had iii major open center surgeries in her life," Bridges says, "but she got to live out her wish to work at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, working with the nurses and doctors who helped her. She was working in that location when she died."
Bridges' plans for the school edifice have begun. She purchased an insurance policy on the property and has spoken with local builder Don Bergman. The Metropolis of Fort Pierce added a metal roof on the building and put in new tempest windows on all floors some fourth dimension agone. In 2000, the structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
"I am working on a grant application for the National Trust right now," Bridges says. "We can legally ask people to donate money, whereas the metropolis, the possessor of the property, cannot seek donations. People are concerned nigh city tax dollars being spent here. If it was going to be washed with city tax-payer dollars, information technology would have been done long ago."
Bridges says that the St. Anastasia project's estimated $4 meg upkeep is small compared to the projects the National Trust usually funds. She adds that she meets monthly with Shyanne Helms, the city's project manager for St. Anastasia, and Caleta Scott, grant director for the city.
"The thing being done currently is the architectural plan with Don Bergman. The next step will be to hire an environmental company to remove any mold or asbestos in the edifice, but I have not hired anyone all the same. That volition probably be grant-funded. The general contractor comes after that. That is Charley McEntee. I volition only hire local, and am hoping to detect people that will help, possibly past donating time or materials."
Bridges added that Fort Pierce Utility Authorisation is adding some exterior lighting to the property for security and safety which she hopes will slow downward the attempted intermission-ins.
"We keep getting people breaking in," she says. "It (the lighting) will never stop them, simply I am hoping it volition tiresome them downward a little. Those windows are expensive."
Built in 1914 to serve the Cosmic families in the area, the rock structure once housed 2 floors of classrooms and a huge auditorium with a stage occupying the third floor. The edifice was utilized by the St. Lucie School Lath prior to the arrival of the first Sisters of St. Dominic in 1926, when three Dominican nuns from Adrian, Michigan, arrived in Fort Pierce to staff the school.
A brochure from the parish'due south 100-year celebration contained words from Sister John Francis: "Nosotros soon became aware that we were the first 'nuns' always to come up to Fort Pierce. A day or so afterward nosotros arrived, Sis Sabina and I were walking down the street when a huckster driving his horse and cart spied united states, garbed as nosotros were in our white habits and blackness veils. His shock at the sight of u.s.a. knew no bounds. He let become the reins, raised his artillery to the sky, and exclaimed: 'Celebrity exist to God, what are them?'"
Every bit the number of Catholic families grew in St. Lucie County, the structure was able to house grades 2-12 until the 1960s. Kindergarten and first-class classes were conducted in a wooden construction at the northward terminate of the property. In the '60s, the church received donations and a plot of land on South 33rd Street from George F. Guettler and his wife, Christine, to build a new elementary school. After the opening of the new grade school, the Orangish Avenue campus housed only high school classes, changing its proper noun from St. Anastasia High School to Primal Catholic High School and adding buses that helped graduates of St. Joseph'southward Catholic Schoolhouse in Stuart and St. Helen's Cosmic Schoolhouse in Vero Beach go on their Catholic school educations across eighth grade. The final course to graduate from Central Catholic High School was the Class of 1965. The remaining high school students were moved in the fall of 1965 to the campus of the new John Carroll High School that had been congenital on the church property along Delaware Avenue westward of 33rd Street.
Bridges plans to use the first floor of the building for the classes Lindsay Schoolhouse of the Arts offers to young people and adults. The second floor will be open to the public with fine art galleries and exhibits, forth with a children'south library. The tertiary floor will remain an auditorium which she hopes to rent out to organizations for their productions.
"The outside needs so much work, and so the contractor says he won't know which floor will be worked on first until he gets in in that location and looks at things closely," Bridges says.
There is no elevator in the former building and plans are to add a tower to the building that will provide the lift service for those who might need information technology.
"My hope is to put in a public parking lot and a pocket-sized garden with an amphitheatre," Bridges says. "I envision a beautiful, modest garden and a small amphitheatre, just a small 1."
On February. viii, the City of Fort Pierce and the Lindsay School of the Arts are hosting a Meet and Greet on the 3.5-acre campus. There will be a barbecue and demonstrations of some of the school's lessons, probably an art form, Bridges says. The public is welcome to come up and see what the school has to offer.
Currently belongings its classes at infinite it rents in the Crain House at Orangish Artery and Seventh Street, Lindsay School of the Arts has been in existence since 2017. Bridges and her husband, a graduate of Fort Pierce Central Loftier School, both teach at the school, which offers classes in dance, art, music, drama, creative writing and product, which includes graphic blueprint, for ages eight-xviii. Nearly of the classes are after-school or in the early evening, September through May. All classes are offered costless of charge.
In the summer months, the school staff runs an eight-week, 10-hours-per-day free art camp. This year, Bridges says, the school is projected to take funding for 85 kids. Parents are applying at present to have their children included in the summer camp.
Funded mostly past the Children's Services Council of St. Lucie County, Bridges says the council funds encompass about all of the programming, but not 100 pct of the costs.
"I tin take what I accept funding for," Bridges says. "Currently we have 39 classes. Nosotros said we would do 22 classes with 150 kids. We have many more than we projected, so we do a lot of fund-raising. Obviously, the more funding, the more programs I tin offer. I have massive waiting lists equally nosotros only register students in one case a twelvemonth, in August. We have over 300 seats in classes. Students can take just ii classes, equally nosotros want them to focus. "
Bridges says that family unit income level is a gene in the application process, just the school besides asks that the children employ and holds an interview process. The staff wants students who want to be in the plan and not students coerced by their parents. Offer classes from 3-8 p.m. daily, Monday-Thursday, the schoolhouse leaves Fridays open for master classes or special events.
A new venture, Art Start, is a special class for children ages 1-4, offered during the day and in the evening. Heather Wells, the schoolhouse's artistic writing teacher, teaches music and art to the little ones and Bridges teaches trip the light fantastic toe.
Bridges says her staff is going through trauma-informed care classes. Information technology is a seven-calendar month training. In improver to staff training, she also offers five seminars a year that the students have to nourish: mental health sensation, man trafficking, anti-bullying, safety gun control and substance abuse.
"Nosotros like students to attend the seminars," Bridges says. "Nosotros also monitor their grades and attendance at school. We are stressing quality and accountability. Nosotros want the kids to want to be hither, not forced. We take a lot of home-schooled kids and special needs kids."
Although the piece of work schedule for the old St. Anastasia Schoolhouse has yet to be determined, Bridges is looking frontwards to moving her students into their new facility.
Source: https://www.indianrivermagazine.com/landmark-st-anastasia-building-may-be-school-once-again/
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