By Florida/Caribbean Architect – Spring 2026. The crisp, angular forms that mark the public entrance to the recently renovated Booker High School Visual & Performing Arts Center in Sarasota evoke the meticulous facets of a gemstone. That imagery is no accident. For architect Ekta P. Desai, AIA, a partner with Schenkel Shultz, who led the renovation, the allusion to precious jewels was central to the design concept.
“We developed the gemstone metaphor based on what the school represented as one of the first historically black schools in the area,” said Desai. “Gemstones crystallize under pressure over time. Similarly, this school was formed over many years and survived many pressures of its own.”
The school’s long history began in the 1910s when Emma Booker, an educator and community activist, helped to establish the first elementary school for Black children in Sarasota. In 1925, after years of advocating for better facilities, Booker led a procession of students and teachers from their former makeshift classrooms to their first purpose-built schoolhouse. A high school was added in the 1930s and the entire institution was consolidated on a new campus in the predominantly Black Newtown neighborhood in the 1940s.
