From Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade, 11 cities are celebrating their centennials in 2025 and 2026. WLRN News' series "History We Call Home" spotlights the moments, ideas and people that made these cities part of our community's fabric over the past century.
Long before the Town of Davie became known for horses and rodeos, it was miles of untamed Everglades. After the wetlands were drained in the early 1900s, people flocked here for the agriculture and development opportunities. The pioneers who settled learned to work the land, withstand storms, and face the challenges of building a new community. At the heart of those early days was the Davie School. Today, it’s the Old Davie School Museum.
In one of the museum classrooms, the original blackboard, though damaged and timeworn, holds some clues into the lessons of decades past in one of Broward County’s earliest schools. On the top left corner of the board, “reading, writing and arithmetic” are penned in white chalk. On the right side, some illegible cursive remains.
Walking in between the rows of wooden desks — many marked by students’ engravings and doodles — feels more like a history lesson than a reading, writing or arithmetic one as the floor, also original, creaks beneath your shoes and the aroma of old wood invites you to step into the past.
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“ I just love when the kids come into the classroom and they're like, ‘Whoa!’” said Kim Weismantle, educational director of the museum and event venue. “They just left their own classrooms and now they're here at ours and it feels so wildly different to them, but it's not — there's still a teacher up front who's wanting to share information with them.”
Weismantle is in charge of combing through historical archives, planning projects and leading tours. When the little ones of today come visit on school field trips, she’s the one guiding them.
While guiding a group of fourth graders from Pasadena Lakes elementary school last year, Weismantle paused in front of a photo showing pioneer kids bathing in a canal. They didn't have bathing pools back then, she told them.
Students couldn't believe it. Their squeaky voices echoed in the room.
In that same space as the photo is a glass showcase of old toys and trinkets: Crayola crayons, dolls, dominoes and puzzles.
“Kids are going to be kids forever. There's very little difference between that,” Weismantle said.
The school opened in 1918 — the Great Florida Land Boom on the horizon. In its lifetime, the building has served as a meeting place for dances, dinners, elections and as a shelter during hurricanes and floods.
The Town of Davie was incorporated into Broward County for the first time in 1925, a century ago. The vote to incorporate happened right upstairs in the school’s auditorium.
Photos of past students and teachers line the walls of the museum. As Weismantle leads tours, she points to some of the people in the pictures, those who helped the school thrive in its early days.
She singled out Althea Jenne, one of the "original figures here" and a "much beloved teacher,” Weismantle said. “There's always very nice stories about her.”
One of those nice stories comes from Edna Hammer Griffin. She moved to Davie in 1927 and attended the Davie School from first to sixth grade.
“Everyone loved Ms. Jenne. She had been at Davie School around 35 years,” Griffin said of her teacher in an interview at the 1991 Orange Blossom Festival.
“She had always said she was going to teach until I came back from college and took her place.” Griffin came back to the Davie School in 1946 after graduating from Florida State University, which was then Florida State College for Women. “In the fall I started teaching at Davie Elementary School; I took Mrs. Jenne's second grade.”
Griffin retired in 1980. She died in 1995 at the age of 74.
From school to museum
By the late ‘70s, the student body outgrew the school. So in 1978, the current Davie Elementary opened its doors for some 700 students, coming a long way from the 90 students it opened with back in 1918.
After students and teachers were transferred to the new school, the old building was used as an annex site for neighboring elementary schools. Shortly after, it became the office space for the Broward County School Board. But when the board built a new office space, the fate of the Davie School building was uncertain. A women's volunteer organization rallied support at the local, state and federal levels to save it.
In 1987, the Broward school board sold the property to the Town of Davie. It sold for $1 — $2.85 today.
A year later it made the list of the National Register of Historic Places.
Exhibits take visitors through the history of building this Broward community: new Florida families coexisting with gators and rattle snakes, how Griffin Road got its name and the contribution efforts for World War II.
For Weismantle, the most important thing to her is that she’s honest about all of Davie’s history. That includes acknowledging the decades of racial segregation and the forced displacement of the Native American tribes of this area, the Seminoles and Tequesta.
“When I see other communities of kids that come in for field trips, I want to be able to share all of the histories that we have here,” Weismantle said. “We're a school and that's what we're supposed to do. We're here to share the information for the next generation.”
Davie School of today
Going to the current Davie Elementary involves driving on College Avenue, a fitting name for a street surrounded by locations for the University of Florida, Nova Southeastern University and Florida Atlantic University.
There’s something symbolic about driving past them on the way to an elementary school — the road to success in young adulthood starts with the building blocks learned as kids.
Principal Delicia Collins agreed.
“We have an amazing partnership with [Nova Southeastern University],” Collins said. “They provide so many opportunities for us. We've had several of the students say, ‘Hey, we want to tutor.’ And so we invited them to Open House and parents were able to sign up with them directly.”
Inside Davie Elementary, posters and wall decor encourage student success and motivation. But perhaps the most striking image in one of the main hallways is the mural of the school’s mascot — the mighty mustang — rearing towards you. And behind it, a giant green horseshoe, a sort of good luck charm.
“ We try to incorporate Mustang pride in all that we do and remind our students that they are magnificent, that they are destined for greatness,” Collins said.
Davie Elementary is slightly below total enrollment capacity. Still, it has over 600 students — filling almost 90% of the capacity.
Other Broward County Public Schools are less than 50% enrolled. This drastic underenrollment comes at a financial loss for the district, so it’s moving forward with a plan to repurpose, consolidate and even close some of the emptiest schools.
Still, Collins wants to see her school continue to grow and thrive. It has clubs for debate, music, robotics, cheerleading and more.
“We are always galloping towards success and galloping to greatness,” Collins said.
