Riverside Military Academy History

Riverside was chartered August 23, 1906 by Brenau College professors A.W. Van Hoose and H.J. Pearce. In 1907, they purchased 25 acres of land on the west side of Riverside Drive, which was then two miles north of Gainesville and half a mile from the Chattahoochee River.

Construction on the Academy began in 1907 with plans to open the school that fall. The school did not open until September 1908 due to construction delays.

Pearce and Van Hoose hired Sandy Beaver to be Riverside's head of school in 1913. Beaver would go on to acquire ownership of the school in 1915 and preside over its growth until his death in 1969.

Riverside operated a winter campus in Florida for more than 50 years. In 1931, Sandy Beaver purchased the Hollywood Hills Hotel in south Florida. With the exception of brief time during WWII when the Florida campus was used as a Navy training facility, the school's cadets and staff would spend January-March at the Florida campus and the remainder of the school year would take place in Georgia.

Facing tremendous commercial development in the area surrounding its Florida campus, the Academy sold that property in 1984 to dedicate resources to the renovation of the Georgia campus.

Riverside began its Gainesville, GA campus renovations in 1997 and completed the project in 2004. The renovations, totaling about $95 million, included a new barracks building, a new academic building, a new gymnasium, extensive renovations to its athletic fields, and a new library and performing arts.

As one of the few remaining all-boys college preparatory military schools today, Riverside serves an enrollment of over 400 boarding and day students in grades 7-12. Its students hail from 25 states and 22 different countries.