08/18/2026
A little bit of history about our Downtown location
It's one of our more peculiar buildings in downtown Sebring - especially if you're visiting, or one of our newer residents.
On North Ridgewood Drive - over on your left-hand side just before reaching our Circle - and over on your right-hand side if you've already gone around our Circle - it's the two-story all-brick building with "THE SALVATION ARMY" across the top of the ground floor from edge to edge. And locals today know it as NOT a Salvation Army building.
It was built in 1916 when Sebring was just getting started from the Circle outward and experiencing its first building boom - with smaller wooden structures being replaced by bigger brick buildings.
As the North Ridgewood corridor was being planned out as the main route into and out of downtown from the north - Mr. Sebring wanted a good mix of business, municipal, and religious facilities along both sides of a wide corridor. It would be the place to go and to be for buying and selling merchandise, running the new city, and attending church.
Our founder - George Eugene Sebring - was a devout Christian and strong supporter of the Salvation Army - going back to his teenaged years during the mid-1870s when he was saved on a street corner in East Liverpool Ohio. 40 years later he wanted the Salvation Army to have a major presence along North Ridgewood, and so it did. It served the community for over 100 years at that location with church services, social outreach, and administrative offices.
It is now the home of Sophie's Cafe - a favorite Cuban restaurant here in downtown Sebring. But the rich heritage of the Salvation Army inside that building is not forgotten, and those letters sprawled across the front facade of the red brick remain. The familiar "Sophie's Cafe" appears in handwritten script halfway up the building.
