The Hollywood Schoolhouse

This handsome brick building was a gift from the timber baron next door. In nineteen twelve, Frederick Stimson funded a new schoolhouse to replace the old one room Derby School, a wooden building that had stood at this crossroads since eighteen ninety two. Stimson had already renamed the surrounding district Hollywood, after the many holly trees he planted across the logged over hillside, so the new school took the name Hollywood Schoolhouse.

Its life as a school was surprisingly short. Too few children lived nearby to keep it running, and by the early nineteen twenties the district had merged with neighboring Bothell and the classrooms fell quiet. The building did not sit empty for long.

Over the following decades it served as a community clubhouse, then as the home of the Sammamish Valley Grange, then as an auction house, and later as an antique mall. A restoration in nineteen ninety four returned the old school to public life. Today it is a state historical landmark and one of the most sought after wedding and banquet venues in the valley, a century old brick classroom that now hosts celebrations rather than lessons.

It stands as one of the last visible pieces of Stimson's Hollywood.