WESTWOOD—As today’s kids get ready for a long Presidents’ Day weekend, here is a look back at a long-ago school that was named for Honest Abe.
The kids in this early 20th century photo are posing on the front steps of the Lincoln School, which was built in 1900 near the corner of Mill Street and Third Avenue in Westwood.
The story of the Lincoln School began in the 1890s when the voters of Westwood approved the purchase of a strip of land 317 feet long on Third Avenue stretching back towards Fourth Avenue. On this site the Lincoln School was constructed. The two-story frame building made to house the borough’s elementary grades was erected at a cost of $9,000. This was the first school in town to have indoor plumbing and electric light.
The cornerstone was placed during a ceremony in February 1900 on what would have been Abraham Lincoln’s 91st birthday. A big crowd of Westwood people came out dressed in their furs and overcoats on that cold day. When the school opened, total student enrollment was fewer than 185 children for all grades, from kindergarten through eighth.
In 1913 a new two-story brick structure took shape behind the Lincoln School, and classes were extended through grade 12. Westwood now had a high school in town for the first time. The borough’s first high school class graduated in 1915. There were only 11 young men and women in that class, illustrating that many still believed an elementary education to be sufficient.
As the high school expanded, Lincoln School had to be moved. The old wooden schoolhouse was transferred to a new foundation along Fourth Avenue in 1922. It was later demolished in 1970.
The high school at Third and Mill became solely a middle school when the new regional high school opened up on Ridgewood Road in the Township of Washington in 1964. Eventually the junior high school followed suit and moved to the township location as well. The final class graduated from the middle school at Third and Mill in 1988.
The structure was demolished in 1994 and the Enclave condominium complex was constructed at the site.
— Kristin Beuscher is president of the Pascack Historical Society