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James Oscar Betelle (1879-1954) was a Newark, NJ based civic architect. Public schools were his speciality—if you grew up in the New York Tri-State area, there's a good chance you went to one.
Betelle drifted in obscurity for sixty years, until the day I paused to wonder, "who designed my school?" More…
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Tag Archives: school
Down Wilmington Way
In March, 2008, I took a three-day excursion to James Betelle’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. My plan was to visit a few research libraries, see significant locations, and, well, just get a sense of where Betelle came from. What follows … Continue reading
Schools of Summit, New Jersey
After completing my tour of CHS’s clock tower on a Saturday morning in April, I continued on to check out the Guilbert & Betelle schools built in the nearby town of Summit. The firm designed the high school and a … Continue reading
A Climb Up Columbia’s Clock Tower
This past Saturday I had the rare treat of being given a tour of the clock room and astronomical observatory of Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. As an alumnus of CHS, the massive clock tower has always been … Continue reading
The State Normal School at Jersey City
“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, … Continue reading
The Ghost of New Rochelle High School
My first exposure to New Rochelle High School was a series of photographs in a 1932 article on school architecture written by James Betelle. While I had been pretty familiar with the traditional English Gothic and Neo-Classical designs of his … Continue reading