NORTHVALE, N.J.–The first school in Northvale, named for the patriot Nathan Hale, was constructed in 1909. A modest wooden structure, it burned to the ground just a few years after it was built. The people stuck with the name, but went with a better building material, and the Nathan Hale School reopened in a large brick building on Paris Avenue. Many years later, that building became the Northvale Public Library and municipal building.
This class photo shows older students from the Nathan Hale School in 1916, the very same year the borough was formed. Northvale has always been on the smaller side in terms of population (about 4,800 today), but in 1916 only around 500 people called the rural community home.
The borough, when it seceded from Harrington Township and incorporated that year, included both Northvale and East Northvale. The latter broke off in 1923 to form Rockleigh.
Those students who went on to a more advanced education attended either Closter High School at the corner of High Street and Durie Avenue (later Village Middle School, and now closed) or St. Cecilia’s in Englewood. The creation of the Northern Valley Regional High School District was decades away.
Northvale named its school for Nathan Hale (1755-1776), a Continental Army soldier during the Revolutionary War. While on an intelligence gathering mission in New York, Hale was captured by the British and later hanged. He is well-known for his famous last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Before the war, he had been a teacher in Connecticut.
There were three versions of the Nathan Hale School in the borough’s history. The first was the wooden schoolhouse that burned in 1909, the second was the Paris Avenue brick building that was used until 1969, and then there was the third, built on Tappan Road, which was a middle school until the 2011-2012 school year. At that time, Nathan Hale Middle School and the Thomas Jefferson Elementary next door were consolidated into the Northvale Public School.
With that, after over a century, there ceased to be a Nathan Hale School in Northvale.
