page_title: St. Petersburg College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St. Petersburg College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: East branch moved in 2018 and reopened in conjunction with St Petersburg College. Updates include: a drive-thru hold pick-up window, extended hours, more community space and a career assistance deprtment upstairs.
context_page_description: St. Petersburg College is a public college in Pinellas County, Florida. It is part of the Florida College System and one of the institutions in the system designated a "state college," as it offers a greater number of four-year bachelor's degrees than traditional two-year community colleges focused on associate degrees. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and enrolled about 29,000 students in the fall of 2018.
  The school was founded in 1927 as a private junior college, the first in Florida. It later became a public institution and grew to include campuses throughout Pinellas County. Today it has eleven campuses and centers: four in St. Petersburg, Florida and seven in Seminole, Pinellas Park, Largo, Clearwater, and Tarpon Springs.
context_section_description: St. Petersburg College was founded in 1927 as St. Petersburg Junior College by Captain George M. Lynch, Pinellas County's city superintendent of schools for the city of St. Petersburg, as a private, non-profit institution. It was created in part because of the economic downturn preceding the Great Depression as a way for local students to receive a postsecondary education without having to relocate or pay high tuition. On opening day, the college consisted of 102 students and 14 faculty members, operating from an unused wing of St. Petersburg High School. After one semester, SPJC moved its operations to a former high school facility overlooking Mirror Lake, where it remained until January 1942. At this point, the facility was moved into a single building on the corner of 5th Ave. N. and 66th St. N.—a building still in active use today as the James E. Hendry Administration Building, part of the St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus.
  SPJC became a public college in 1948.
  After a 1959 study clearly illustrated the demand for a higher-education facility in northern Pinellas county, SPJC began planning the development of a second campus located in Clearwater, Florida. In 1962, the college acquired 72.8 acres (295,000 m²) of land in the vicinity of Drew Street and County Road 32 (Old Coachman Road), land which previously contained an orange grove and a waste disposal site. Construction began on February 25, 1964. That same year, the new campus, consisting of only five buildings, was officially dedicated on November 21.
  Like almost all other Florida colleges, SPJC was all-white until the mid-1960s. A companion junior college for black students, Gibbs Junior College, opened its doors in 1957. Gibbs was placed under the supervision of SPJC in 1965, and became the Gibbs campus of SPJC. In 1966-67 the name was changed to the Skyway Campus of SPJC. It ceased operations in 1967. The only association of today's (2016) Gibbs Campus of SPC with the former Gibbs Junior College is nominal; it is not located where the college was.
caption: SPC Clearwater Campus Library East Branch
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