Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/180498
CELEBRATING A CENTURY Football has always been a part of the Sarasota High School tradition. Here is a scrimmage outside the first high school on Main Street. Photo courtesy of the Sarasota County School Board SARASOTA HIGH SCHOOL HAS CALLED A NUMBER OF BUILDINGS HOME OVER THE YEARS, BUT THE MIGHTY SAILOR SPIRIT ROARS ON By Stan Zimmerman City Editor Sarasota was not yet an official city when Sarasota High School opened on Sept. 15, 1913. "The new building, which has been completed, will open its doors Monday to the 200 and more pupils from primary through the eleventh grades," reported the weekly Sarasota Times in its Sept. 11, 1913, edition. In fact, the initial student body was already bigger than the capacity the school was designed to handle. A week after students entered the doors, the newspaper reported an "enrollment of 253 (on) the first day" in a sub-headline. The brick building that stood downtown is long gone. The classic Sarasota High School building of "Collegiate Gothic" design was built a decade after the original one, when the growth of students totally overwhelmed that first Sarasota High. The newspaper's enrollment figures are disputed by Karl Grismer in his book The Story of Sarasota. "When the new building was opened for classes on Monday, Sept. 15, 1913, more than 350 students were enrolled. To be exact, 200 girls and 153 boys," Grismer wrote.