HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Circa-1716 cedar-and-cypress colonial schoolhouse on St. George Street, reported haunted by a woman in white and children's voices
14 St. George St, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Adults $7.95; Children 6–12 $6.95; Children 5 and under free.
Access
Limited Access
Historic wooden building with narrow interior stairs; garden grounds are accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1716 · Oldest surviving wooden school building in the United States · National Register of Historic Places · Spanish Colonial architecture
St. Augustine's earliest wooden structures were destroyed when British troops under Governor James Moore burned the city in 1702. The schoolhouse at 14 St. George Street was constructed in the rebuilding period, with the earliest surviving tax record placing it in 1716. The building's walls are bald cypress and red cedar — two of the most rot-resistant local timbers — joined with wooden pins and iron spikes rather than nails, a construction technique consistent with early Spanish colonial practice in Florida.
The structure operated as both school and residence: the classroom occupied the ground floor, while the schoolmaster and his family lived on the second story. An adjacent kitchen building stands separately, as was standard in colonial construction to reduce fire risk to the main structure. The school operated under the Spanish colonial government into the British Period (1763–1783) and continued through American territorial governance into the 1860s, making it one of the longest-continuously-used educational structures in the country.
Juan Genoply, identified in property records as an early owner, is among the few documented names associated with the building's first century. The structure passed through several owners before being preserved as a museum attraction.
In 1937, workers wrapped a large iron chain around the exterior as an emergency hurricane anchor — an intervention visible today and cited frequently in visitor accounts as evidence of the building's fragility under Florida storms. The museum opened formally in 1931 when former students who had attended as children reunited on site. The wooden schoolhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
The primary figure reported at the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse is a woman in white — seen peering up the staircase to the schoolmaster's quarters, reflected in a mirror, and visible in the window overlooking St. George Street below. Ghost tours operating in St. Augustine's Historic District cite her as one of the city's most consistent apparition reports. Local oral tradition has proposed she is either the wife of an early schoolmaster or the mother of a student, though no documentary record ties the description to a specific person.
The second cluster of reports centers on sounds: children's voices heard from the empty classroom during off-hours, and the occasional scrape or knock from the schoolmaster's quarters above. St. Augustine's Historic District concentrates many of the city's haunting claims in a small geographic area — the nearby Old City Gates and several colonial-era cemeteries are within walking distance — and ghost tour operators regularly position the schoolhouse as a paranormal waypoint within a wider contested zone.
The lore does not invoke the yellow fever epidemics that struck St. Augustine in later colonial periods; the specific claim that deaths occurred in the schoolhouse during an epidemic is not supported by the museum's documentation or by Wikipedia's article on the building. The reported phenomena remain unexplained visitor and guide accounts.
Self-guided tour of the circa-1716 bald-cypress-and-red-cedar structure, the oldest surviving wooden school building in the United States. The schoolmaster's family quarters on the second floor, the restored classroom, a separate kitchen building, and the Minorcan homestead garden are all included. Open Sunday–Thursday 10 AM–6 PM, Friday–Saturday 10 AM–8 PM.
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