TENAFLY, N.J.—Can you imagine a scene like this taking place today? Below, kids are all over Tenafly’s first public school—and no safety nets in sight!—in a photograph taken around 1890.
In keeping with gender norms of the time, the girls are primly posed at ground level, while the boys have climbed out a top window and turned the school facade into a jungle gym.
The red brick school, built in the early 1870s, stood at the corner of Tenafly Road and West Clinton Avenue. It cost $11,000 to build.
The class photo shown below dates to 1883. We can only wonder what the teacher (back row, right) is pointing at! The school budget for that year was $1,500.
In the following decade, according to school records, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” and Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” were pulled from the library shelves due to objectionable content.
The old brick school was torn down in 1920 to make way for Tenafly High School (which, in turn, has now become Browning House condominiums).