By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information
Every June, students across New York State graduate from high school and prepare for college, careers, and their future. In Geneva, familiar milestones mark the season: plays and concerts, National Honor Society induction, award ceremonies, senior breakfast, Junior Prom, and Senior Ball. Today, it is easy to take the high school experience for granted. We expect high school to be a social community with extracurricular activities, traditions, and athletics, not just coursework. This kind of school life did not always exist. In Geneva, the roots of that experience emerged at the Classical and Union School on Milton Street in the 1800s.
Opened in 1840, the Union School gathered all Geneva’s white schoolchildren under one roof, from four-year olds learning to read, to adolescents preparing for work or college. There were four rooms and five teachers, and the building could hold 300 students. The school classified students and coursework into four departments. The youngest children were in the Primary Department, followed by the Juvenile (Elementary), Junior (Middle School), and Senior (High School) Departments. Most classes were segregated by sex, but some served both boys and girls. Teachers were mostly female, led by a succession of male principals. State and local tax revenue supported the facility and some operations, but until 1858 parents also paid tuition fees (about $1 per quarter).
Younger students at the Union School learned basic reading, geography, spelling, history, and arithmetic. The Senior Department had additional courses in the sciences, higher mathematics, philosophy, classical and modern languages, surveying, composition, and declamation. This curriculum was comparable to that at state-chartered private academies. The coursework prepared young men to attend college or start a career. The Geneva newspaper praised the Union School course for young ladies who “may be furnished with every qualification, that can render them useful, happy and accomplished.” It might also qualify them as schoolteachers, one of the only professions open to them.
The Union School was popular with the local community and paying students from outside the area. More parents looked to ensure a good education for their children, and the school had to be expanded in 1842. By 1849, the weekly average attendance was 330. Ten years later, the state granted the school the right to offer classical instruction, which is when the name changed to the Classical and Union School. Primary students were moved into branch schools in 1853, and another wing was added onto the Union School. Students who wanted to go beyond the basic education at the branch schools (to about age 12), could continue at the Union School. Select students there could take academic courses required for college preparation.
After years of steady success, the district was dealt a blow in December 1868, when the Classical and Union School caught fire and burned to the ground. The fire started in the early morning when the citizens were asleep, and the streets were clogged with snow. The firemen could not get their pumper trucks to the site, and the delay resulted in an almost total loss. The Geneva Gazette reported the rumor that students practicing for an event the evening before caused the fire by carelessly disposing of a burning match or paper. The one bright spot was that the wing containing the library was the last to burn, and people were able to remove most of the books.
The community immediately resolved to rebuild the school. While students attended school in rented spaces in the village, the school trustees contracted to build a new larger building. Opening in October 1870, it was designed by A.J. Warner, a well-known Rochester architect who designed many New York buildings, including the city halls for Rochester and Buffalo, Rochester’s Powers Building, and Auburn’s Willard Memorial Chapel. The new school was modern for its time, with window blinds, steam heating, and gas lighting. There were rooms for 8 teachers, seating for over 500 students, and a 510 lb. bell in the tower for ringing in the school day.
This building was the center of secondary education in Geneva for the next 50 years. While parts of the school experience there would look familiar, most of it would be foreign to any Americans alive today. Curriculum content and methods of teaching were quite different and relied on memorization and recitation. Classes were very large, with seating for 125 pupils in the main recitation rooms or classrooms. Boys and girls were kept strictly apart, with separate entrances and staircases for each. Discipline was strict, and students were expected to process through the halls in silence. There was a chapel for assembly but no gymnasium or auditorium. Physical education involved outdoor walks for girls and outdoor marching drills for boys.
The school eventually became known as Geneva High School; a term first used in the local newspapers in 1892. Standard elements of the modern high school experience began to appear. In the late 1800s, the school offered Regents exams and had boys’ sports teams. The district began holding commencement ceremonies in 1890 which included student orations, academic prizes, and a commencement speaker. Students formed high school fraternities and sororities and they sung a school song and alma mater in annual concerts. By the early 1900s, the school had a debating society, a school savings bank, and a literary magazine. Class day in 1905 featured a class history and a class prophecy. School colors, mottoes, and a school pennant show an emergence of school spirit.
Finally, in 1924, the first school yearbook was produced containing photos of the graduating seniors. This marked the last class to graduate from the old Classical and Union School. A new school was rising next to it that would house future graduates from Geneva High School. We will learn more about that building in a future post.
Other posts in this series
Founding of the Geneva School District
Geneva School Expansion and Reform
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