Schools, growing up and other places
George Washington School
The building housing the elementary school I attended was on the corner of Oak and North Streets. This same building was the school my mother and father attended and at least one teacher - Miss Gabriel, our Kindergarten teacher - had also been our mother's teacher. I was enrolled between 1957 and 1964, from Kindergarten to the 6th grade. The school was also named the Oak Street School or School No. 1 in earlier official documents. The building existed prior to 1886 as found in histories of Binghamton: it was that old. It was remodeled and enlarged in 1918. The decision made by the city council to remodel the building was in contradiction to the recommendations by the Board of Education who recommended that the building be abandoned as a school, 40 years before I attended classes in the same building.
Each of the three stories of the building had about 5 or 6 classrooms, two bathrooms and an office all opening onto a large central hall that extended from the front to the back of the building. I remember the rooms as towering, open spaces. It seemed as though the windows were nearly 2 stories tall. Each classroom had a 'cloak-room', an enclosed aisle that paralleled one wall of the class and had open entry doorways at each end. The aisle had coat hooks at child height running along both inside walls. We were to file into that space from one end to hang our coats and remove our boots and then file out into the classroom from the opposite end. The school grounds extended from Oak street to Murray Street along North Street. The playground - as it was called - behind the school was paved with asphalt and surrounded by a high chain link fence. At the north side of the building, facing North street, was an entrance (not the more formal front entrance) to the building. When we arrived at school we had to stand in line, outdoors in the playground, waiting to enter at exactly 8:00AM. The lines were organized somehow, I can't remember how: maybe by class or by what floor of the school your class was on - maybe both. We had to stand in the correct line. There were monitors - police like people, maybe some older kids, and teachers who walked between the lines to stop kids from playing and talking loudly. There was a large metal silo painted black on the outside of the school building on the north side. Inside, supposedly, was a spiral slide that was intended for use as a fire escape. I say supposedly because in the 7 years I went to school there I never saw the inside of that silo. The school was in another neighborhood, not in the First Ward. It was south of the railroad tracks that were the southern boundary of our neighborhood. We walked to and from school - about 1 mile - and had to cross the tracks by using a pedestrian underpass (and here from the south). This was a concrete tunnel underneath the tracks accessed by enclosed stairs. It was a damp, urine smelling place of trepidation and fear. There was no cafeteria in the school so we walked home for lunch, a total of 2 trips each way, 4 trips each day. The building was finally demolished in the 1970's, more than 50 years after the recommendation by the Board of Education to take it down. The property was paved over and is now a parking lot. Our last year at George Washington school, in the 6th grade, was memorable for many reasons, but two events were to reverberate through our lives: President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. I remember someone coming to the door of our classroom - the top left corner in the photos - and asking our teacher to step out into the hall. When he came back into the classroom moments later he told us that the President had been shot. The second event was the broadcast on the Ed Sullivan television program of the Beatles only 4 months later.
Change was coming fast and furious and little did we know of it. |
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Daniel S. Dickinson School
After we graduated the 6th grade we all went to Junior High middle schools - grades 7-9. Now, when I speak of we I am speaking of the kids I grew up with, not just my family, my siblings. By the 7th grade - I was 12 years old - our world was getting wider, including people that were having lasting impressions on us. Most of the kids in my class went to West Junior High school on the west side of Binghamton. Because we lived in the First Ward - on the other side of the railroad tracks - my friend Bob Maye and I were enrolled in Dickinson School. This was the main school for the First Ward. The building was much larger and more modern than George Washington. The class rooms were arranged around the outside of a hallway that ran continuously around the auditorium in the center of the building, like a race track, connecting all rooms on the floor.
Dickinson school was the arena for many firsts for me. It was the first school I attended that had a gymnasium - under the auditorium in the center of the building. There were showers and a room for changing into gym clothes, which we had to buy. My first athletic supporter. The classes at Dickinson were held in different rooms with different teachers for each subject and we had to change rooms for each class. In my class at Dickinson, within the first week of the first semester, we - I - encountered my first pregnant classmate. It was also at Dickinson that I was first struck - that is a good word to describe the sensation, like being hit with something - struck with the strong sexual attraction to a girl. I noticed her within the first week of school. The attraction continued to grow as we became friends. When Bob and I started classes at Dickinson school we were reunited with our friend Gary Shaheen. Gary and I had met in kindergarten at the George Washington school and had become close friends by the First grade. By the Third grade Bob had showed up and the three of us were good friends. Gary left to attend school at Dickinson sometime around the Fourth grade. We stayed in contact - we all lived in the First Ward and could continue friendships outside of school. But being together again in Middle School, when those fast and furious changes were coming in our selves and in our lives, cemented our friendships. The Dickinson school building also housed the First Ward branch of the Binghamton Public Library. The library was on the ground floor with great tall windows on one side. The room was bright, with tall ceilings and dark woodwork -probably oak- around the windows and doors. The bookcases were made of the same wood and so was the librarians' desk in the center of the room. I spent many hours there and it was there that began my long, abiding attraction to libraries. Dickinson school, and the public library branch, were torn down in the 1980-s or 1990's. The property was sub-divided and small townhouses were built. |
The location of the Dickinson school building in 2014.
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References
A report of the survey of the Binghamton school system
Albany, The University of the state of New York, 1919.
Binghamton, its settlement, growth and development and the factors in its history, 1800-1900
William S. Lawler, editor
Century Memorial Publishing Co., 1900
A report of the survey of the Binghamton school system
Albany, The University of the state of New York, 1919.
Binghamton, its settlement, growth and development and the factors in its history, 1800-1900
William S. Lawler, editor
Century Memorial Publishing Co., 1900