The Fellsmere Public School, the first masonry school building in what is now Indian River County, was built during 1915 and 1916 at 22 South Orange Street. The 22,680 square foot, two-story school with a raised basement was designed by Frederick Homer Trimble, a former Methodist missionary architect who had worked in Fuzhou, China and began his architectural career in the United States in 1915 with the Fellsmere School. Trimble later designed several buildings in Fellsmere and Vero Beach, more than 150 buildings in South Florida, and the first buildings at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. The St. Lucie County School Board awarded the construction bid to Fellsmere contractor Arthur F. Sanders on May 4, 1915. Trimble donated the school's plans and was paid $100 per month to supervise construction. After delays until bond sales provided funding, Sanders' crews built the Fellsmere Short Line Railroad by September 1915 from the Fellsmere Farms Railroad north of South Carolina Avenue down to the center of Cypress Street to the school site, using a special railcar built in Palatka to haul materials on 4x4 heart-of-pine rails spiked to 2x8 crossties. Work on the foundation began in October 1915 and was finished in mid-November, and the basement was completed in mid-December 1915. The cornerstone was laid on January 31, 1916 under the direction of the Grand Masonic Lodge, and the school was completed that year at a cost of $40,000. Its doors opened to 136 students on October 2, 1916, with Principal Anderson A. Price, Assistant Principal Ina C. Elder, and five women teachers—Miss Jesse M. Hunter, the first teacher in Fellsmere in 1912, Miss Neva M. Hunter, Mrs. A.A. (Lula) Price, Miss Ethel Jones, and Miss Agnes Helseth—teaching grades 1 through 12. The building, the oldest public school building in Indian River County, remained an active school until 1982, was later used as Fellsmere City Hall and Police Station, became the birthplace of the annual Fellsmere Frogleg Festival, and in 2010 was restored by the City of Fellsmere for use as a City Hall, Government Center, and Boys and Girls Club at a cost of $3,060,000 before reopening to the public on October 19, 2010.