The D.W. Waters Center
First Hillsborough County High School

2704 N Highland Avenue

Built in 1911, the D.W. Waters Center was the first high school built in Hillsborough County. It recently has been beautifully rehabilitated, earning an award for outstanding preservation from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation in 2003. The building is a three-story masonry block building set upon a raised basement accented by a rusticated masonry water table. A closed rectangle with an open center that has been partially infilled, the structure occupies an entire city block.

The building is highly significant as an early twentieth century example of a purposefully constructed urban high school, demonstrating ordered assemblage of spaces in an educational facility. Originally designed by William Potter, an addition was done in 1920 by noted Tampa architect M. Leo Elliott, who laid one of his signature bricks where the addition meets the original wall.

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