Columbia High School: Birth of a Building

I’m used to seeing old photographs of schools when they were new and pristine, set against the barren terrain that is indicative of fresh construction. And as my recent tour of Newark showed, it makes for an interesting contrast with contemporary images, where the landscape is overgrown and the school itself may be in various stages of decay. But what about the first stages of life?

A great find I made was a series of construction photographs taken of Columbia High School over a roughly three-year period, from 1925 until 1927 when it was completed. Except for the vintage cars, machinery and external scaffolding, it looks like any typical construction site; mud, wood, concrete and workers standing around. The photos were probably intended for utilitarian insurance record-keeping purposes, but today offer a rare look at the creation of a school building.
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Marie Betelle Sleeps with the Fishes

This morning I went down to the Surrogate Court Building in New York to find information on Marie Betelle. According to her obituary, she died living in NYC, so I was hoping to both find a copy of her will and perhaps see what her building looked like (my first walk around that area revealed no structure where I thought it should be).

The Surrogate Court is a big, imposing cube of Beaux-Arts goodness plunked right down on Chambers Street. I crossed the main entrance, and was dazzled by a beautiful, mosaic-lined barrel-vaulted lobby. It was empty, save for a security desk and a metal detector manned by two guards; one big, one little.

After receiving a visitors pass sticker, I went through the detector. I collected my bag on the other side and headed towards the elevator, when the big guard said loudly, “Sir- come here please.”

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“New School Buildings, State of Delaware”

The following excerpts are from a lengthy article by Betelle that appeared in The American Architect, Vol. CXVII, Number 2321, June 16, 1920. In it, he outlines the roots of Pierre S. duPont’s epic rural school-building plan for the State of Delaware and the civic, educational and personal benefits it would bring to the citizens of that State. Written before any of the structures were completed, the article was accompanied by beautiful pen & ink drawings and floor plans of many of the school designs.

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New School Buildings, State of Delaware
By James O. Betelle, A.I.A.

Illustrated by the work of Guilbert & Betelle, Architects for the Delaware School Auxiliary Association, a corporation organized for the purpose of expanding the duPont Fund for new School Buildings to be built in the State of Delaware.

The school building program now in progress throughout the State of Delaware is at once the most interesting and probably the most important that has ever been undertaken by any state.

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A Drive Through Newark

I ventured back into Newark last week, confident I wouldn’t encounter the shape-shifting roads of my first trip. My goal this trip was to research a number of Betelle-related items at the Essex County Hall of Records. Going there served a dual purpose; not only does the Hall house the deeds and mortgages to all properties in the state (going back to 1637), but Guilbert & Betelle actually designed the building. So I was going into a Betelle building to research Betelle himself; you have to love the meta-ness of it. Continue reading →

“The Unusual School System of a Suburban Community”

This article is from the 1928-1929 Yearbook of The American School and University. Much of the text is similar to the CHS article from American School Board Journal, which came out about the same time. It’s interesting to note that Betelle refers to “Messrs. Guilbert & Betelle, the architects for all these new buildings”, as if his partner, Ernest F. Guilbert, were still alive (he died in 1916). Also note that a number of the equipment suppliers at the end of the article may be seen in the advertisements I posted a while ago.

The Unusual School System of a Suburban Community
by James O. Betelle
of the firm of Guilbert & Betelle, Architects, Newark, N.J.

The village of South Orange and the township of Maplewood, N.J. are two separate municipalities, which are entirely independent of each other, but the direction of whose educational affairs is vested in a single Board of Education.

montrose-school.jpgThese towns are fast-growing communities, within commuting distance of metropolitan New York. Their school population has doubled within the last eight years and will probably double again in another eight years. These communities are typical American suburban villages, with a very high type of citizenship. Most of the heads of the households are business men who commute daily to their office in New York or Newark. A large percentage of the citizens of South Orange and Maplewood have sufficient means to send their children to private schools if they desire, but they have felt it better and more democratic to build good free public schools, and the illustrations accompanying this article show the type of buildings erected and the facilities provided.
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