“On February, 1930, we the class of January 1933, entered the portals of the State Normal School at Jersey City. Bewildered, cautious, lest we commit a grave offense, we wandered aimlessly about the halls. Attention was called to the foyer, the library, and the auditorium. We fairly drank in the beauty of a school so new, so enhanced by the character of its architecture.”
—The SNS Tower, 1932
Guilbert & Betelle designed a number of normal schools (later called teacher’s colleges). The earliest, Newark Normal School built 1913, is a handsome Jacobean design in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Newark. Two others, built in the mid 1920s, were Glassboro Normal School (today Rowan University) and New Britain Normal School (Central Connecticut State University).
The last such school built by the firm was the State Normal School at Jersey City. It is handsomely rendered in Betelle’s trademark Collegiate Gothic, and is certainly among his finest works. Today the building is named Hepburn Hall, and serves as the administrative building for New Jersey City University.
