Picture is courtesy of the Clearwater Public Library.

It just seems so out of place.

Etched across what looks like an epitaph are six lines. Written into the concrete are the words “Erected A.D. 1925 WM B. Ittner, M. Leo Elliott, Associated Architects.”

Smiling faces adorn the sides of the brick oblong box, think grave site from a New Orleans cemetery.

The stones, a mystery to some, actually are a time capsule created more than 30 years ago out of the remains of the old school. (The current school was built in the 50’s). Before that students attended Central High on Greenwood Avenue. That school was built in 1925 and designed by M. Leo Elliott and William Ittner.

Eventually the old school fell into disrepair after the “new” school opened in the 1950s. By the mid 1970s the old brick school burned down.

 Picture is courtesy of the Clearwater Public Library.

John Tsacrios, a student and then a teacher at Clearwater High, remembers the old school. He attended classes there, and when the capsule was built, he was teaching at the new school.

“It’s really been a very interesting subject to have that sitting out there,” Tsacrios said. “People want to know who’s buried there.”

But it is not a tomb. The pieces are old lintels and ornamentation from the old school, saved by former teacher Steve Gerakios, Tsacrios said.

After the old school burned Gerakios salvaged the items and moved them to the current school. At the time, a project to expand the school was going on. Gerakios got the construction crew there to build a box using the pieces. It was filled with items about the school and the city around the time of the country’s Bicentennial.

“We keep telling people there are people buried in there,” Tsacrios said. “It’s actually a time capsule.”