Tag Archives: New Jersey

A Climb Up Columbia’s Clock Tower

CHS 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 a source of some mystery. Lucky students have the chance to climb it, either for astronomy or the infamous “egg drop” experiment, but in general it is off limits. Studying the building in detail in relation to my James Betelle research, time and again I’ve read about the great telescope, the sometimes-working clock and rumored mysterious spaces.

Alan Levin, head of the Science Department, was kind enough to indulge my curiosity and meet me on that cool, clear morning to lead me up all those steps. He was full of interesting trivia and observations, which I will pepper throughout. At the end I’ll have a few bonus tidbits. Continue reading →

The State Normal School at Jersey City

NJ State Normal School

“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.

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The Robert Treat Hotel

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Newark in the 1910s was a city one would hardly recognize today. Driven by an influx of money and opportunity, it was a thriving commercial and industrial port.

A city on the rise needs grand structures, and certainly nothing makes a statement that a city has arrived than having a stately, luxurious hotel. Newark decided to build such a hotel, and in their local school designers, Guilbert & Betelle, they found the perfect architects. Continue reading →

The Marshall School, South Orange, New Jersey

The Marshall School, 1930

One of the most important contracts for Guilbert & Betelle were the schools of the South Orange and Maplewood School District in New Jersey, where they would eventually design all of the new school buildings up through 1930. The creation of the first school they built, The Marshall School, (named for retiring Board president James Marshall), was significant for both Betelle and the District.

In 1920 the District, under the direction of George E. Low, Chairman of the Building Committee, began an aggressive building program to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding student population. The existing buildings were cramped, hazardous (there were numerous fires over the years) and ill-equipped.

This was not a new realization, and indeed a number of strategically located parcels of land had already been tentatively selected for schools a number of years before. One of these, on Grove Road in South Orange, was determined to be the best location for the first school.

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“New Grade School Buildings of South Orange and Maplewood, NJ”

The following article by JOB appeared in The American School Board Journal, January, 1926. In it, he outlines the unique structure of the SO/M school system, accompanied by photographs and floorplans of the four initial grade schools. His description is rather understated, considering how huge the project was; the district had essentially planned to build, over a 10 year period, roughly eleven school buildings. JOB designed them all.

New Grade School Buildings of South Orange and Maplewood, NJ
James O. Betelle of the Firm Guilbert and Betelle, Architects.

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The Village of South Orange and the Township of Maplewood New Jersey are two separate municipalities. They are entirely independent of each other, but the direction of their educational affairs is vested in a single board of education. In this respect the situation is rather unique, but it has worked out to the advantage of all parties concerned.

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