Venice School

Mrs. Leona Zeller Fitz donated these pictures of students and teachers from Venice School to the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. Pictured above are over fifty elementary students who attended Venice School in the first quarter of the twentieth century. No students have been identified, but Mrs. Baum was the teacher on the left and Mrs. Kelley was the teacher standing on the right. 

In the picture below, Leona Zeller is marked with an x. Mr. D.W. Carlisle, a teacher at Venice School in 1915, is the tall man in the back row. Later, he became principal of Venice School. Many of the male students are wearing short pants, or "knickers," and most of the older boys have on hats.

Venice Heights Elementary School is now a part of the Sandusky City Schools system, but for many years Venice School was one of the schools in Margaretta Township. (The original Venice School was founded in 1818 on Venice Road near Cold Creek.) This map from the 1896 Erie County Atlas shows the location of the school at that time, just south of the railroad tracks along Sandusky Bay.

An article in the April 4, 1923 issue of the Sandusky Register reported that “a handsome new school building” in Venice was to be dedicated on April 5. At that time, Mr. D.W. Carlisle was the principal of Venice School, and he also taught grades 7 and 8. All the other teachers at Venice taught two grades as well. That new school building, no longer standing, was on Bardshar Road, a short distance away from Trinity Lutheran Church. In the 1950s and 1960s, during some years an entire grade held class in the basement of  Trinity Lutheran Church, because of over-crowding at Venice Elementary School.