Classes were first held in a rented antebellum home on North Pine Street, in the Sannoner Historic District.

The school moved to another home before a permanent building on Jackson Highway (now Hermitage Drive) was completed in 1917.

By the late 1940s, Florence's growth was fueled by the construction of Wilson Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority's potassium nitrate plants, which had overcrowded Coffee.

[3] But in the 1980s, due to economic decline in the area, the population of families with young people likewise fell, ending the need for two schools.

The building was near the campus of the State Normal School at Florence (today known as the University of North Alabama).