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large measure of success almost impossible.”
In 1912 the junior department moved to West 7th Street,
leaving the upper school far quieter at recess.
Public speaking was emphasized at all levels.
Leal continually pointed to the small size of the classes,
adding "Unless there be some hopeless weakness on the
pupil’s part, he must progress swiftly and successfully."
Although college entrance was a major aim. "The broadest
education without nobility of character is a veneer and
sham-, in the contests of life only the worthy should win,”
Leal said.
Then, as now. school lunches were a problem. In 1898 Leal
said hot lunches were offered but then "suspended because
of the small number who were interested. The price was too
low to be remunerative."
In 1900 Leal added a course in mechanical drawing as "a
technical course not intended for college boys, nor for
those who may be interested in drawing merely as an accomplishment,
but for those who propose to make it a stepping-stone
to their life work.”
There was still no gymnasium at the school. Military drill
helped "gain grace and dignity of manner, erect carriage
and instant obedience to constituted authority." An athletic
association fielded teams in hockey, football and baseball.
For almost all of the early years, graduation ceremonies
took place at the school. In 1907, however, on the school's
25th anniversary, commencement was held at The Casino.
This was a special night, for an alumni association was
formed and graduates presented Mr. Leal with a purse containing
$500 in gold. The Yale Cup went to Otis Averill for
attaining the highest average in athletics and scholarship.
John Leal operated his School for Boys for 34 years. In
that time 1000 boys attended Leal’s and 350 went on to
institutions of higher learning, usually the best in the cou
try.
Major Miller, the owner of the school building, leased it to
Miss Caroline Fitz Randolph and Miss Grac Webster Cooley,
who continued the school in the fall, assisted by Miss Abby
Mellick in the primary department and a Miss Mechado in
the kindergarten.
Miss Randolph and Miss Cooley established a thoroughly
progressive school, aimed toward the full development of all
the powers of the child — physical and moral as well as
mental.
The course of study was graded and took the child from
kindergarten through preparation for college. For those not
interested in college, a course complete in itself was offered.
for which a diploma was given.
In the 1902 Randolph Cooley Collegiate Brochure 19 teachers
were listed for a student body of approximately 130. Of
this latter number, 45 to 50 were boys in the kindergarten
and Primary departments.
The Randolph Cooley School opened for its fall term Monday
evening. September 22. 1902. The number of pupils enrolled
was so large that in some grades the limit had been
reached, although new names were added. Miss Randolph
also announced to the parents and visitors thatadditional
faculty had been added.
Miss Randolph had the sympathy of her patrons when she
announced the withdrawal of Miss Cooley, whose cooperation
had been invaluable during the school’s early years.
On Tuesday, November II. 1902, Miss Grace Webster Cooley
was married to Captain Mason Matthews Patrick, a
member of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army,
with the accesories of a military weeding. It was performed
by Rev. James M. Taylor, president of Vassar College, where
the bride was graduated in 1894. The couple resided in
Washington, D.C.
In 1902. Miss Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, principal of the
Flartridge School in Savannah, Georgia, was at Johns Flopkins
Hospital "haveing.” as she put it, "typhoid fever."
While there, she heard about a small private school in Plainfield.
New Jersey, from a doctor who wanted her to buy it so
that he could marry the principal, Miss Caroline Fitz Randolph.
On Friday. June 5, 1903. The Randolph-Cooley Collegiate
School — under the leadership of Miss Carolyn Fitz Randolph
— was ended.
So many things go into the history of a school.
Helen Joy Rushmore, H.S. 09, recently told Reenie Fargo.
H.S. ’60. that in the 1900-1910 era the Hartridge student body
would be assembled in the morning, roll call taken, absences
noted, and then in would stride Miss Hartridge to get the
day started. Her opening words were:
"Good morning, girls.”
And. of course, the dutiful reply would be:
"Good morning, Miss Hartridge.”
Except that one small group of less than reverent upperclass
types found, to their considerable delight, that they
could return her greetings strongly and with great relish
without fear of being detected, by saying:
"Good Morning, Sausagel”
Phoebe MacBeth remembers the young teacher who took
the first grade to call on Miss Hartridge. The girls picked
flowers from the school garden to take to her. They never
did this again.
Adele DeLeeuw. H.S. ’18, writes of "a full-bodied woman
with heavy-lidded eyes that never missed a trick who
"often took charge of classes herself. She had the uncanny
ability of good teachers to be able to keep her head down,
writing letters, for instance, while she saw everything that
was going on — the girls surreptitiously getting chocolates
out of their desks, passing notes and redoing their hair."
"She had high standards of deportment and learning and
it was her pride that most of her girls went on to college and
did extremely well there. If you decided on Vassar — her
own alma mater — you were in the top echelon. She managed
to tolerate Smith. Bryn Mawr, Holyoke and Wellesley.”
Miss Emelyn Battersby Hartridge purchased the good-will
of the Randolph-Cooley Collegiate School, located at 303
East 7th Street. Plainfield, the corner of Roosevelt Avenue,
in 1903.
Within a year she had changed the name to The Hartridge
School and begun to expand from the nursery school
through freshman year in high school institution she acquired.
She also added a boarding division and rented 107 West
7th Street as a residence, then rented the Casino across the
street, a building perhaps most famous for the bowling alleys
in the basement. Later it became the Park Hotel Annex,
which burned November 25, 1974.
At first students at the Hartridge School were shocked at
being exposed to as "vulgar" a sport as bowling, but they
quickly came to enjoy this, along with fencing, croquet and
other activities.
There were four women in the first graduating class under
Miss Hartridge, three of whom graduated: Dorothy
Burke (Mrs. Henry P. Marshall), Winifred Rapalje (Mrs. Frederick
Martin Smith) and Grace Otteson (Mrs. Riley McConnell).
Verna McCutcheon (Mrs. Walter Logan) did not graduate.
Mrs. Marshall maintained a long-standing interest in the
school. Her great-nice was there while I was, and she pointed
out that Mrs. McConnell’s great nieces, Marcia and Cyn
thia VanBuren. were attending Hartridge when she replied
to a questionnaire in the late I960's.
Miss Hartridge operated a school for young women from
all over the United States, a school highly respected for its
standards. Its early report card provided room for marks in
Greek, Roman. Medieval. English and American history, geography,
rhetoric, grammar, reading, spelling, writing;
Greek. Latin, French or German; trigonometry, geometry,
algebra or arithmatic.”
There were also categories for behavior and neatness.
Miss Hartridge set high standards for herself and those
around her. Early boarding school regulations, for instance,
noted that there was to be "No boisterousness anywhere at
any time.”
These regulations concluded: "Our class of girls naturally
stand back on the stairs or in a doorway for older people and
have pretty table manners and are well-behaved at church."
This was not window-dressing, for graduates of the Hartridge
School went on as leaders. At one point the Courier-
News noted that the president of the students’ association
and the athletic association at Vassar were Hartridge
graduates, as were the president of the senior class, a head
of house, and a film star at Smith, the head of a hall at
Radcliffe, and the president of student government at Wilson.
"All 13 of Hartridge applicants for Vassar last year were
accepted without question,” the article said, going on to list
the young women who were awarded regional and national
scholarships at Vassar and Radcliffe "without examination.”
"Almost all” were doing distinguished work.
There were Shakespearean plays every other year — full
productions with professional coaching, professional makeup.
an orchestra from Newark, as well as Saturday night
dramatics for the boarding students every week when they
acted out the great literature that was read to them that
day.
There was a strong tradition of community service. On
their own. or rather under the careful eye of Miss Hartridge,
Hartridge students raised the money to begin a children's
ward at Muhlenberg Hospital and annually ran a fair to
support this effort.
Charles Digby Wardlaw joined the Leal faculty in 1911 and
immediately began his efforts to promote organized athletics.
He bought the good will of the school in 1916.
Leal lived until October. 1936.
Wardlaw said of him. "He was one of the finest gentlemen-schoolmen
this country ever produced. He was a wonderful
scholar and dedicated teacher, who instructed all
day, every day, through recess and at night to see that his
boys made good.”
Despite these kind words, there was apparently acrimony
between Leal and Wardlaw. In a recent interview, Prentice
Horne, headmaster of the Wardlaw School after it became a
non-profit institution and then W-H head, said that as a
condition of the sale of the Leal School, Leal insisted that
Wardlaw make no reference to the fact that Wardlaw's
school succeeded Leal’s.
Wardlaw almost immediately violated this agreement,
and. ironically, it may be this very transgression that keeps
Leal's name alive 100 years after he founded his school in the
Wall Street suburb that boasted more than 100 millionaires.
But, of course, John Leal's clock sounds in the office of
the current headmaster as it will for many years hence.
After purchasing the Leal School in 1916, Charles Digby
Wardlaw wasted little time in establishing his own school
over which he would preside for 43 years. He bought a
building at 1038 Park Avenue, a couple blocks north of the
present Muhlenberg Hospital. At that time the property was
on the outskirts of Plainfield, at the end of the trolley line.
Because of its location, the school was able to maintain 4
football fields, 3 baseball diamonds and 6 tennis courts, all of
which were extolled in a full page ad announcing the new
school in the local press. Shortley after acquiring the new
plant. Mr. Wardlaw built a modern gymnasium which was
considered to be one of the finest in the state at that time.
It had windows on four sides and was amply equipped with
the latest and best athletic apparatus.
With a faculty of 6 which included his wife Charlotte as
art instructor and the venerable Harriet Holloway as geography
teacher. Mr. Wardlaw continued the pursuit of academic
excellence established by his predecessor, Mr. Leal.
He was one of the early proponents of the country day
school movement in the United States and wrote many
articles on the advantages of having children remain with
their families instead of going off to boarding schools. Mr.
Wardlaw was apparently ahead of his time in this respect,
as many of his students went on to attend the finest prep
schools in the Northeast. They were well prepared for these
schools as attested by the many letters of commendation
sent to Mr. Wardlaw by the headmasters of those institutions.
The Wardlaw School was a firm believer in a complete
education that included vigorous and mandatory participation
in physical and athletic activities. The first school
brochure stated that "a restless boy is a mischievous one"
and that "every boy above second grade must spend 2 hours
daily in recreative games.”
Miss Hartridge objected to the image that her school
served only the daughters of the rich and saw to it that
there were always scholarships for talented young women
whose families could not afford the fees. Sometimes she
provided that money herself.
But also, early on, she fostered the idea of alumnae participation
— in rolling bandages during the Great War and in
offering scholarships.
Also, early on. Miss Hartridge saw the need to establish
the school she loved on a permanent basis. In 1931 she began
the shift to a non-profit institution, which was accomplished
in 1933 with F. Seymour Barr. Henry W. Brower. Miss Har
tridge, E. Kendall Morse, Murray Rushmore and John P.
Stevens Jr. as trustees.
At almost the same time she notified the board of her
intentions to sooner or later stepdown as head, and began
her own search for women who would carry on her strong
tradition.
By now. in 1933. the school had announced plans for a
country day school, full of air. light, healthful activity and
intense scholarship.
In 1930 a juniper tree was planted next to Pan in the open
green. "Martin with spade and watering can did the heavy
work." The statue of Pan had toppled by my time at Hartridge,
but that juniper probably still stands.
In 1934 Rosemary Evans and Camilla Haywood, both H.S.
'33, added "Hail Hartridge" to the school’s heritage, followed
in 1936 by the first presentation of the Wigton Cup
and 1937 the H Pin.
Prentice Horne recalls that the Park Avenue school was
literally bursting at the seams during the 1931-1932 school
year when he attended Wardlaw. The excellence of the
faculty was evident in his teachers, who included Marian
Kilpatrick in math, Paul Troth in English and Madamoselle
Escoffier in French. In 1932. Mr. Wardlaw purchased the
Strong residence at 1030 Central Avenue. A beautiful Georgian
mansion that was architecturally significant when constructed
in 1896. it would serve as the home of the Wardlaw
School until the move to Inman Avenue in 1969.
Mr. Wardlaw maintained the school as a privately owned
proprietary institution in contrast to a non-profit incorporated
entity. Nonetheless he was substantially aided by
many friends of the school in relocating to Central Avenue.
Most significant was the donation of the beautiful new gym
by the Laidlaw family.
Admist the country's worst depression, the school continued
to grow and develop in many fields during the I930's.
Mr. Wardlaw's twin sons, Dig. Jr. and Fred joined their
father in the new school after graduating from the University
of North Carolina. By 1933 the enrollment had pushed past
the 100mark. In 1937, Mr. Wardlaw acquired a nursery school
and operated it in the old gym at the Park Avenue school.
During the 30's, Wardlaw fielded outstanding athletic
teams in the major sports of football, basketball and base
ball. In addition opportunities to pursue track, boxing, fenc
ing. gymnastics and marksmanship were offered to the
students. Each spring, the baseball team would travel south
and play college level teams. One of Mr. Wardlaw's proudest
moments had to be in 1938 when his boys beat his alma
mater, the North Carolina freshmen. 9-3 on the tar heels
own turf.
By the end of the decade, Wardlaw had truly reached a
zenith of accomplishments. For four consecutive years, vir
tually the entire school put on an elaborate Gilbert &Sullivan
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