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Academic building on the left and girl's dormitory on the right.

Before the University of Florida was founded by legislative act in 1905, with Gainesville as its location, the city was served and was proud to be served by, the East Florida Seminary. The community was proud enough of the Seminary that when it burned in 1883, public funds were subscribed and a $12,000 debt taken on to rebuild. This is how the school looked about 1887, after the rebuilding was finished. The academic building now is part of the Methodist Church, at 419 Northeast 1st street in Gainesville, and is called Epworth Hall. Epworth Hall was later added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The girl's dormitory became the White House hotel after the Seminary was discontinued when the University of Florida was founded; as a hotel, it served the city many years, until it burned.

East Florida Seminary was the name given to a school founded in 1853 by the Methodist Church. The school was troubled financially, and was suspended after the Civil War. An existing state school in Ocala took up the name, and later was moved to Gainesville and merged with the Gainesville Academy, which itself was founded in the 1850s. East Florida Seminary, when organized by the state legislature, was maintained to serve the 22 Florida counties east of the Suwannee River; its counterpart, West Florida Seminary in Tallahassee, was to serve Middle and West Florida. Both of the seminaries had their original beginnings in territorial days, when Congress donated townships of land for the support of such institutions.