Naming Squirrel Hill Schools

By Helen Wilson, Vice President, Squirrel Hill Historical Society

WHEN YOU BUILD A SCHOOL, YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT A NAME. In the past, almost all of Squirrel Hill’s public schools were named for noteworthy industrialists and politicians who took a great interest in education, or at least lived where a school was later built. Discovering who these people were and why schools were named for them is itself an education, and it would take a book to present a full biography of their lives and achievements. Here is information about just some of them.

Education in Squirrel Hill has a long history. One early source mentions a log cabin school existing around Shady and Phillips Avenues in the 1840s, but an article from The Pittsburgh Gazette Times dated March 10, 1907, states that the first school building in Squirrel Hill was a “little red brick school house” built before 1868 on an old alignment of Forward Avenue that today is Eldridge Street. Both the school and avenue were named for Walter Forward (1786–1852), a renowned lawyer who held a number of government positions, including U.S. Congressman and Treasury Secretary. Judge Forward’s large estate was located a short distance up Forward Avenue, where Pittsburgh Allderdice High School now stands.

First Forward Avenue School, The Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Third Section, March 10, 1907, Page 6, "Squirrel Hill in Education."

“Dice” was built in 1926 and named for Taylor Allderdice, president of the National Tube Company and one of the first members of the Pittsburgh Board of Education when it was created in 1911. Until around 20 years ago, the high school’s name was Taylor Allderdice High School. After Mark Roosevelt became superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools in 2005, he mandated that “Pittsburgh” be put before every Pittsburgh public school’s name so that they all would be listed together in directories. (Roosevelt is the great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, who had a school named after him in Greenfield.)

Taylor Allderdice, as depicted in The Story of the Sesqui-centennial Celebration of Pittsburgh (1910).

Using the name of the district in the names of its schools was not a new idea. A similar thing happened in 1868when Pittsburgh annexed Peebles Township, which included Squirrel Hill, and divided it into wards. Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Swisshelm Park, and Regent Square became the 22nd Ward. At the time, each ward had its own school district and school board. The 22nd Ward school district was given the name “Colfax District” by school board member James J. Fleming because he admired Schuyler Colfax, who at the time was running for Vice President on a slate with Ulysses S. Grant for President.

The Colfax School District had five schools. At first, all were named Colfax and numbered 1–5, but that created so much confusion that the schools were given individual names during the early 20th century, in accordance with a law passed in 1894.

• COLFAX NO. 1, which replaced the schoolhouse on Forward Avenue, kept that name. The new schoolhouse was located on the corner of Phillips Avenue and what is now Beechwood Boulevard. The small building was replaced in 1911 by the imposing edifice that exists today. It is the only one of the original five that is still a public school (Pittsburgh Colfax K–8).

Students line the steps of Colfax School No. 1, ca. 1880. Courtesy of Squirrel Hill Historical Society.

• COLFAX NO. 2 was on the corner of Beechwood Boulevard and Saline Street near Browns Hill Road.It closed in 1907 before it received a new name but reopened in 1916 as the Roosevelt School Annex when Roosevelt School (of Teddy Roosevelt fame) in Greenfield (where the Giant Eagle is now) became overcrowded. The Annex school closed in 1939. Brown’s Hill Bible Chapel occupies its location today, built on the old school’s stone foundation.

• Roosevelt School closed when John Minadeo Elementary School opened in 1957. Minadeo was named for a heroic 15-year-old, eighth-grade crossing guard at Gladstone School in Hazelwood who was killed in 1954 when he pushed fellow students out of the way of a speeding car that had lost its brakes. The prestigious Carnegie Medal was given to him posthumously the next year.

• COLFAX NO. 3 became Forward Avenue School because, like Squirrel Hill’s first school, it was on what was then Forward Avenue, although farther west, in lower Greenfield. The school was torn down in 1923, but its retaining wall still exists under the Parkway East bridge over lower Saline Street.

• COLFAX NO. 4, on Whipple Street in Swisshelm Park, became Swisshelm School. Although one source says it was named for noted writer and abolitionist Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884), most sources say it was named for its location—the former farmland of the Swisshelm family, early settlers of the area. The building was demolished after it closed in 1975.

• COLFAX NO. 5, at Solway and Wightman, became Wightman School, named for Thomas Wightman (1818–1908), owner of the Thomas Wightman Glass Company. Wightman School is now Wightman Community Center, owned by Carriage House Children’s Center, and houses various community organizations, including the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition.

Squirrel Hill has had two other public schools. Brown’s School was built on the bluff above the Monongahela River in 1888 on land donated by the wealthy Brown family, which owned coal mines and a large steamboat operation headquartered near the mouth of Nine Mile Run. Most of the students at the school were children of their workers. Brown’s School closed in 1932, but the building is today an apartment house, visible on the left as you cross the Homestead Grays Bridge going toward Squirrel Hill. Davis School, named for Dr. H. B. Davis, principal of the Frick Training School for Teachers in Oakland, was located on Phillips Avenue. It opened in 1931 and closed in 1980. After it was demolished, Heritage Place, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, was built in its place.

In addition to public schools named after industrialists, Squirrel Hill is home to a private school named in honor of one. Although St. Edmund’s Academy’s namesake is St. Edmund, the king of East Anglia (ruled 855–869) who was killed by Viking invaders, the name also honors Edmund Mudge, an iron, steel, and oil industrialist active in the Church of the Redeemer and many civic associations. The school opened in 1947 as Ascension Academy. The name was changed to St. Edmund’s Academy when Mudge’s widow donated the land for the new school in 1952.

As for institutes of higher learning within Squirrel Hill’s boundaries, Carnegie Mellon University is named for the industrialists who created it. Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and Andrew and Richard B. Mellon founded Mellon Institute. The two institutes merged in 1967 to form Carnegie Mellon University. Chatham University’s name comes from William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the late 1700s. He supported the American position in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

As a former Pittsburgh Public Schools teacher, I was struck by this passage in the 1907 article referenced above: “When the district was created in 1868, … it had but one dilapidated school building, containing only one room with a principal and one teacher. Now the same territory … has eight buildings, four or five of which are educational palaces ....” The beautiful old schools I taught in were indeed educational palaces, with marble staircases, stained glass windows, intricate mosaic floors, and ornate architecture, impressing on those who taught and learned there the importance of education. One by one, these buildings are disappearing, replaced by the plainer and sometimes downright humdrum architecture of modern school buildings. We are influenced by our learning spaces. I wonder how this transition affects us.