BROOKLYN FRIENDS SCHOOL
150 Years of Light
BROOKLYN FRIENDS SCHOOL:
150 Years of Light
WRITTEN BY
Melanie Rehak DESIGNED BY
Helene Benedetti, Emphas!s Design WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY
Susan Price ‘86, Head of School Dr. Larry Weiss, and the Brooklyn Friends School Advancement Office
PHOTO (LEFT): Amanda Becker, Class of 2018
Š 2018 by Brooklyn Friends School All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or quoted in any form by electronic or mechanical means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retreival systems, without the written permission of Brooklyn Friends School. Brooklyn Friends School 375 Pearl Street Brooklyn, New York 11201
Contents 2
34
84
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38
86
TRIBUTE MESSAGES
LETTER FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL
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FRIENDS FIELD
INTEGRATION AND EQUALITY 1927-1957
STEWARDSHIP
LIGHTING THE WAY
1987-2017
FOUNDING AND EXPANSION 1867-1897
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EQUITY, INCLUSION & SOCIAL JUSTICE
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HEADS OF SCHOOL
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EDUCATING THE WHOLE CHILD 1897-1927
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COUNTRY AND COMMUNITY 1957-1987
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TRIBUTE MESSAGES
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
119 INDEX
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BROOKLYN FRIENDS SCHOOL AND NEW YORK QUARTERLY MEETING: FRIENDS FOR 150 YEARS
“In Education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own investigations and draw their own inferences.” Brooklyn Friends School “Educational tenet” as expressed in the 1885 catalogue
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“Blue Pride runs deeply through the lasting friendships made from the class of 2001. Here’s to 150 more years of quality education and diversity, Brooklyn style.” With love,
JESSE, ARTESIA, ADRIENNE, NOEMI, GINSENG, CHARLES, ANAND, NAOMI, DESIREE, AND CASSIE
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Dear Friends, As a longtime student and teacher of history, I find it particularly meaningful that, in the lead up to our 150th year, many of us at Brooklyn Friends—students, faculty, alumni, parents and grandparents—became increasingly more aware of our institutional history. Amazing human stories from the past came to vibrant and meaningful life through the preparatory research and development activities for the Sesquicentennial Celebration. As I look at the many antique photographs of 19th and early 20th century BFS students and teachers that our researchers have found in the School’s archives, I am prompted to think of what these members of earlier BFS learning communities have in common with us in 2017. Despite the many changes in material culture and political, economic, and social conditions that separate us in time, the commonalities reflected are steeped in the Quaker values that our school was founded upon, and that still resonate with our community today.
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A six-letter acronym, SPICES, has become a popular device used by Friends Schools to name Quaker values: Simplicity; Peace; Integrity; Community; Equality; and Stewardship. The origins of this list can be found in Howard Brinton’s 1943 text, A Guide to Quaker Practice, and it was expanded to its current form over the next 50 years.
As a Learning Community, Brooklyn Friends strives to provide opportunities for students, faculty, staff and parents to participate in decision-making, information sharing, and collaborative action in a unity-seeking manner that is primarily concerned with serving the needs of all community members in an equitable, just, and friendly manner.
When we refer to Simplicity, we seek in our students, faculty, and staff a concern for truth, beauty, and harmony that can be expressed verbally, in writing, artistically, and in terms of direct, honest, straightforward action. The Simplicity testimony reflects a willingness to listen to and appreciate mindfully the voices of others and, most importantly, to one’s own inner voice. It supports the development of compassionate, concerned, loving relationships with other community members.
While differences in power, privilege, knowledge, experience, and skill exist in any community, the
Consistent with the Peace testimony of Friends, we recognize that conflict is a universal condition of our human species. Our task is to seek non-violent conflict resolution that can address people’s divergent conflicting claims of truth and justice in a manner that seeks equity and reconciliation rather than dominance and destruction. The ongoing search for Integrity at BFS involves the School’s support for the collaborative, inward probing by students, faculty, and staff of questions concerning their evolving personal identities. Valuing integrity involves nurturing each individual’s development of an internalized moral conscience that can define the intentionality with which one acts and makes decisions. In addition, integrity enables an individual conscientiously to understand and evaluate the impact of her or his own actions and decisions on others, and to perceive the central importance of respecting the integrity of those with whom one interacts despite the differences that might exist between their identities and one’s own.
Equality testimony requires a fundamental respect for that uniquely equalizing element— the divine spirit that lives within each human being— that can guide the growth and development of each member of the BFS learning community. Finally, the principle of Stewardship expects that all community members will care for the well-being of the physical, environmental, human, and spiritual dimensions of our School in a manner that preserves, deepens, and refines our learning community’s ability to serve the needs of its members and those with whom it shares the benefits of life on earth. The ongoing evolution and refinement of these values over the past 150 years are reflected in the pages that follow. This book’s narrative seeks to bring to lively reality some of the most important and most interesting developments of our School over those many years. More important even than the history, however, is the fact that the learning community’s commitment to Quaker values, practices, and testimonies is itself very much alive and thriving. As long as that light keeps shining, BFS will thrive over the next 150 years.
Dr. Larry Weiss Head of School
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1867 announcing
THE FRIENDS SCHOOL AT BROOKLYN
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1867-1897 Founding and Expansion
ON JUNE 15TH, 1867, AN ADVERTISEMENT APPEARED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ANNOUNCING THE CREATION OF THE FRIENDS SCHOOL AT BROOKLYN. LOCATED IN THE FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE ON SCHERMERHORN STREET, IT WAS TO BE CO-EDUCATIONAL AND AIMED TO PROVIDE “A THOROUGH, PRACTICAL AND GUARDED EDUCATION [TO] A LIMITED NUMBER OF THE YOUNGER CHILDREN OF FRIENDS AND OTHERS RESIDING IN THAT CITY.” TUITION WOULD BE $12 A QUARTER FOR THE JUNIOR DIVISION, AND $15 FOR THE SENIOR DIVISION, WHICH TOGETHER ENCOMPASSED GRADES ONE THROUGH EIGHT. ON SEPTEMBER 9TH OF THAT YEAR, THE SCHOOL OPENED WITH SEVENTEEN PUPILS FROM AGES SIX TO THIRTEEN AND ONE TEACHER. BY THE END OF THE FIRST YEAR, ENROLLMENT WAS UP TO FORTY-EIGHT.
America was still recovering from the Civil War, which had ended two years previously, as well as the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In spite of the Quaker Peace Testimony made in 1660— “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever; and this is our testimony to the whole world.”—many Friends had made the choice to fight in the Civil War, motivated by patriotism and the abolitionist movement. Now the country was moving forward. The Thirteenth Amendment had passed in December of 1865, stating that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States.” The passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867 required the southern states to uphold the 14th Amendment, granting
former slaves equal protection under the Constitution, in order to rejoin their northern neighbors in the Union. In 1869, the 15th Amendment granted suffrage— to men—regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Brooklyn in the school’s first days was still largely a city unto itself. There were no bridges across the East River to New York; the only way to travel between the two cities was via ferry. Except, of course, when the water froze and an alternate means of transport was suddenly available. In the winter of 1867, according to one report, the river was frozen so solid that as many as five thousand people crossed it on foot. Sleighs were numerous, and the horse was pre-eminent, not only for privately owned vehicles, but for horse-cars (animal-pulled streetcars that
PHOTO (LEFT): Downtown Brooklyn, 1870 (photo courtesy of the New York Public Library)
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BROOKLYN FRIENDS SCHOOL AT 150
ran on rails for easier pulling and smoother travel) which featured straw-covered floors for warmth. The city’s population was then about 279,000 people —smaller than Philadelphia and roughly a third the size of New York. Its heavy round cobblestoned streets were illuminated by gas lamps which had to be lighted and extinguished by hand. Prospect Park, Olmsted and Vaux’s magisterial follow-up to New York’s Central Park, opened to the public in October of 1867. Though it would not be finished for another six years, it provided all manner of outdoor fun for residents right away. In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge—originally known as The New York and Brooklyn Bridge as well as The East River Bridge— was completed. Then the longest suspension bridge in the world at 1595 feet, it provided lanes for horse-drawn and rail traffic, as well as a pedestrian walkway. That same year, poet Emma Lazarus wrote her famous sonnet—” Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—to raise money to construct the base for the Statue of Liberty. Of the statue itself, she wrote: “her mild eyes command/The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.” New waves of immigrants left New York for Brooklyn and its comparably cheaper living and open spaces, including many
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from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The city’s population exploded, and its limits expanded as it absorbed many neighboring towns that made up Kings County. Trolleys began running on its streets in 1890, and by the end of the century Brooklyn had become one of the country’s leading manufacturing hubs. As Brooklyn grew, so did its Friends School. By the 1870s, there were additional full-time and part-time teachers and the student body approached eighty boys and girls. Physical additions to the school space took place twice in the 1880s as it grew beyond its original three rooms in the Meeting House basement. The first of these provided more classroom and learning space, while the second added outdoor areas where the school could ensure its students had plenty of access to fresh air and exercise throughout the day. In 1885, the school articulated its educational philosophy to the public for the first time in its annual catalog: “In Education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be left to make their own investigations and draw their own inferences….the true teacher will lead the children, without repressing their individuality, to find enjoyment in being industrious, systematic, kind, upright and helpful.”
1867-1897
1867
THE OPENING OF THE SCHOOL AND ITS FIRST HEAD On September 9th, the Friends School at Brooklyn opened in three rooms in the basement of the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn Street. It had a staff of one: Mary Haviland, who was appointed as “teacher” at a salary of $400 a year. She officially assumed the Head of School title the following year. Haviland, a Quaker, was twenty-three years old, unmarried, and lived nearby on Joralemon Street with her parents and other family members. Her initial student body was made up of eight boys and nine girls. By the end of the first school year, there were forty-eight students enrolled.
1868
CLARA LOCKWOOD JOINS THE SCHOOL Clara Lockwood was hired as Mary Haviland’s assistant teacher. Like Haviland, she was a Quaker, as were approximately half of the students, who now numbered nineteen boys and twenty-nine girls. Edward L. Stabler, who entered the school as a seven year-old during this period recalled:
“Miss Lockwood had the pupils read in chorus from the Bible each morning. She drilled us carefully in spelling. One of her special points of emphasis was to make sure that we all used “a” and not “e” as the fourth letter in separate. From time to time spelling matches varied the usual school routine and furnished interest and excitement.”
EDWARD L. STABLER, STUDENT
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1869
A TYPICAL SCHOOL DAY The order of a typical school day as reported by Miss Haviland in 1869 was as follows:
“In the morning the whole school ASSEMBLES in one room and fifteen minutes is devoted to the
READING OF THE BIBLE and the REPETITION by the children in
concert of one portion of
SCRIPTURE.” There followed RECITATIONS until noon,
uninterrupted except for a fifteen minute RECESS at eleven o’clock. Three-quarters of an hour was permitted for the MIDDAY “many went home to dine.” when
RECITATIONS continued after dinner until two o’clock
“SCHOOL WAS DISMISSED by the CALLING OF THE ROLL.”
1869
1869
A VARIED CURRICULUM
THE DIVISIONS TAKE SHAPE
By the school’s second year, there were:
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class in history, grammar, philosophy, and physiology
classes in composition
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classes in reading
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MEAL when
classes in spelling, writing, and geography
classes in arithmetic
As the school continued to grow, Miss Haviland and Miss Lockwood began to organize it more thoughtfully by subject matter and age. They divided it into the Senior Department and the Junior Department, both of which were made up of Primary grades as the school ended with 8th grade. The Senior Department was then split into three sections.
1867-1897
1872 FRESH AIR
Outdoor play, already very important to the school, took place on the undeveloped sections of the five lots that had been purchased in 1856, and on which the Meeting House was built in 1857. As one alumni who attended the school during this period later recalled:
“I will not attempt to list all that the School did not have and that are now accepted as a matter of course; such as a gymnasium, field, inter-school games, etc. But the boys, in the boys’ yard, and the girls, in the girls’ yard had good exercise and great fun playing such games as tag, cross tag, cops and thieves, hop skip and jump, and ball.”
1873
CLARA LOCKWOOD BECOMES HEAD OF SCHOOL In 1873, Mary Haviland regretfully resigned due to failing eyesight. She was replaced by Clara Lockwood, who became the second Head of School and held the position until 1884.
1874
THE FIRST SCHOOL CATALOG The school, then called Friends Seminary Brooklyn, produced its first stand-alone catalog, a single folder of about six inches square that listed staff, tuition, and the valuable information that “care is taken to secure good habits, and thorough instruction.”
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1877-1880
AN EXPANDING FACULTY AND STUDENT BODY By 1877 Clara Lockwood had two full-time assistant teachers. Delia A. Scarborough taught the younger children, and Lizzie H. Jones was in charge of Beginning Latin. There were also part-time teachers for French and Drawing classes. The student body, which had hit fifty-six in 1871 before a brief period of decline, began to grow again and continued to do so for the remainder of the century. By 1879, enrollment had reached seventy. At the closing exercises that year, prizes—“classic story books, handsomely bound”— were given for deportment, attendance, and the highest grades. As the school grew, so did its teaching staff. Helen H. Rawson was hired as the head of the Primary Department and Caroline E. Carpenter came on board to teach Geography, soon becoming, in one student’s memory “the best loved of all the teachers.”
1884
THE THIRD HEAD OF SCHOOL Susan Peckham, who had come to BFS as a teacher a few years previously, took over the position of Head of School from Clara Lockwood. Her brother, Truman J. Backus, was the president of Packer Collegiate Institute. She held the post for eighteen years, making her the longestserving Head of School to date.
1885
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION The school articulated its educational philosophy to the public for the first time in the catalog for this year.
“In Education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be left to make their own investigations and draw their own inferences.” The catalog also indicated that map drawing, freehand drawing and “designing” were all part of the students’ regular coursework. Crayon drawing, French, Latin and German had been added as electives.
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1867-1897
1886
THE FIRST NEW BUILDING In May of 1886, the Trustees of the Schools asked the New York Monthly Meeting for funds and permission to upgrade the school’s existing rooms in the Meeting House, as well as build an extension. The new one-story extension, designed by architect William Bunker Tubby (see page 14), was built on the eastern side of the Brooklyn Meeting House over the summer break of 1886. It opened in time for the new school year.
1887-88 FRIENDLY RELATIONS
The school had become a well-established member of Brooklyn’s school community, as evidenced by the list of references that appeared in the catalog that year. Among them were the Heads of the Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute; the Packer Collegiate Institute; the Brooklyn Heights Seminary; and the Brooklyn Latin School.
WILL WALTER JACKSON TRUSTEE Will Walter Jackson (1872-1953) came from a Quaker family whose involvement with the Schools Board of the New York Monthly Meeting (which oversaw both Friends Seminary and Brooklyn Friends School) stretched over three generations. Like his mother, Jackson was a graduate of Friends Seminary. His father, William Morris Jackson, had been a teacher there before joining the family fireplace manufacturing and importing business, and was a trustee for the NYMM Schools Board from the 1880s until 1907. Will Walter Jackson’s service on the board began in 1892, and he took over the role of chair when his father retired. His three children, Morris Bacon Jackson, George Bement Jackson, and Katherine Jackson all attended BFS. Morris Jackson was killed in WWI and memorialized at the school with a prize named for him which was the school’s highest honor. George Jackson joined the family business, and became a member of the Schools Board in 1930 before retiring as chair in the early 1960s. Will Walter Jackson was instrumental to many of Brooklyn Friends’ physical and curricular expansions. The school’s 75th anniversary book is dedicated to him in thanks for his “stimulating personality [that] has been a guiding genius of the Brooklyn Friends School for so many decades.” Jackson also had a deep, abiding Quaker faith. In 1935, he wrote in The Life about his understanding of both Quaker education and a BFS education: “From the earliest days Quaker teachers tried to develop and build on the existing characters...boys and girls were considered equals, and co-education was the custom…. [At] Brooklyn Friends School we wish our students to be individuals who think for themselves. All that we ask is that they try to think clearly and honestly, and that they will try to live up to their best ideals.”
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BROOKLYN FRIENDS SCHOOL AT 150
1888
A LAND PURCHASE AND A SECOND EXPANSION Two vacant lots at 112 and 114 Schermerhorn Street, just east of the Meeting House, were purchased in 1888. This consolidated the New York Monthly Meeting’s land on Schermerhorn, as it also owned the lots running from 102 to 110 Schermerhorn Street, on which the Meeting House and the school’s 1886 one-story extension were built. The NYMM had been trying to buy the lots from their owner for some years with no luck. When he did come to them at last, it was with another offer in hand and the matter was urgent. There was no time to schedule a meeting of the NYMM’s Property Committee. Instead, an anonymous “Friend” (perhaps a member of the Property Committee or perhaps a fellow Quaker who had the means to help) stepped forward and bought both lots for $12,000 under the assumption that the purchase would later be assumed by the New York Monthly Meeting, which it was. The lots at 112 and 114 Schermerhorn were soon graded, fenced, and used as a playground for students. Eventually, these eastern lots became known as the “girls yard,” while the open space on the west side of the Brooklyn Meeting House was known as the “boys yard.”
WILLIAM BUNKER TUBBY ARCHITECT Born in Iowa in 1858, William Bunker Tubby moved with his family to Brooklyn when he was still a baby. Quakers, they soon became members of Brooklyn Monthly Meeting and Tubby attended BFS for three years, beginning in 1868 (his younger siblings followed). Described by the New York Times as “a lithe, suave man leaning at a rakish angle; he could be a successful novelist or a society artist,” Tubby designed several additions and buildings for BFS, beginning in the 1880s, as well as dozens of other houses and structures in Brooklyn between 1889-1910. Many of these commissions came from the Pratt family, who founded the Pratt Institute in 1887. Asked to recall him, Tubby’s granddaughter remembered that he “always spoke to me as thee and thou” and was “‘a very gentle person’ who collected antiques.”
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PHOTO (RIGHT): From the 1886-1887 catalog
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COVER IMAGE by Susan Greenstein 2017 ALL-SCHOOL PHOTO (GRADES K-12) by Gregg Martin​