Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1914-07-08

for school use, at the present time.
School BUILDINGS of 1874

School Buildings OF 1874
Near the beginning of the 1874
school directory is a list of the seat
ing capacity of each building or room
owned or rented by the School Board,
as follows:
Lochiel, 500; Harris Park, 500:
Front street, 90; Eleventh street. so;
Mount Pleasant, 4O4; Chestnut street,
1873; German, 100; Eager, 296; West
State street. 1877; Boas. 42S; Verbeke,
42S; Calder street, so; Ridge avenue.
$50; PENNSYLVANIA avenue, ESQ:
Fourth street, so; Springdale, 20; De
Witt, $50; Vernon street, 81.
Rented Rooms - German church,
112; odd Fellows Hall, go: Knipe.
1872; Chapel, Second-and-a-half and
Calder streets, 1870; Jennings, 166.
The total seating capacity was 1895.
To-day the public school buildings of
Harrisburg seat 1880 and crowded
conditions in various sections permit
little pause in building operations.
1t will he noticed from the foregoing
table that the Lochiel. now used only
as an open-air school, was, in 1874,
the big school building of the city.
It had been erected at a time when
the boom in iron industries. which
followed the Civil War, seemed to give
promise of almost indefinite expansion
for South Harrisburg. AT that time,
what is now a city in itself on Allison
Hill, was almost entirely farmland
with a narrow fringe of dwellings in
Thirteenth street and its immediate
vicinity. Similarly the builders hand
had not touched the Camp Curtin. sec
ton. and even the area from Reilly to
Maclay streets presented more ex-
panses of vacant lots than houses. He
would have been deemed a wild pro-
phet indeed who would have dared to
predict for the eastern and northern
sections of our city the wonderful
growth which has become an actual
fact in the forty years which have in
tervened.
BOas and Verbeke Buildings
Next to the Lochiel, the largest
school buildings of Harrisburg. in
1874, were the Boas, at the intersec-
ton of Forster and Second-and-a-half
(now Green) streets, and the Verbeke
building in Verbeke street not far
from Third. named, respectively, after
two illustrious citizens, Daniel D. Boas
and William K. Verbeke. They were
erected by the hustling school board
of Harrisburg's North Ward prior to
the consolidation of the North and
South Wards into one school district,
@-t NA> "a lAtSC uD-IO-udIe
buildings by the North Ward was the
ground for considerable financial bick-
ering between the two sections of the
city when the consolidation took
effect.
For years the Boas and Verbeke
buildings were the show buildings of
our city to visitors interested in school
matters. They were regarded as the
last word in school architecture. Very
proud was Harrisburg of those two
buildings, whilst those in the remoter
sections of the city were also a trife
e~nvious. These buildings are still in
excellent condition after half a century
of service, attesting the substantial.
honest work that was done in their
erection, but how trifing they appear
when compared in size with some of
Harrisburg's school buildings of recent
years!
When the Boas building was being
erected an old lady of considerable
means came to one of the prominent
members of the North Ward School
Board, DR.. Eager grandfather of the
present efficient principal of the Tech
nical High SCHOOL,, to purchase school
bonds, which had been issued to meet
the expense of the new structure. She
said: Some of my friends want me
to buy government bonds" (then being
issued to meet the expenses of the
Civil War;. but I do not know those
people at Washington and the United
States government may fail: but Dr..
Eager / know, and Dan Boas I know.
and I feel certain the School Board
will never fail"
In the next number of this series
there Will be a further chat about
rhetoric incidents connected with some
OF the school buildings of the list pub
lished above.