TRENTON CENTRAL HIGH
SCHOOL
By Glenn R. Modica
“A testament unto itself…she continues to gaze upon us in elegant silence. Worn and torn. Battered and scarred. She is still ours.” At a recent public conference held at the Trenton Board of Education, that is how one speaker poetically described Trenton Central High School, a school whose fate, as of this writing, has yet to be decided.
In the late 1920s the Trenton Board of Education had the foresight and the good fortune to acquire one of the last undeveloped tracts in the city: the 36-acre Chambers Farm, then used as a nursery. The new high school would be the city’s third, replacing the then existing high school at Chestnut and Hamilton Avenues built in 1900, which in turn replaced the first high school on Mercer Street built in 1874.
Second High School Hamilton Avenue
Trenton
Central High School (TCHS) opened on January 4, 1932 and was formally dedicated
on January 18 amid a crowd of five thousand. Hailed as “an ornament
to the city” and “one of the show places of Trenton,” TCHS was one of the
largest and most expensive high schools built in the country. The
Chambers Street façade stretches broadly for almost 1000 feet, nearly as long
as the Empire State Building is tall. The cost of the building, including land
and furniture, totaled $3.3 million. Most firms involved in the construction
were based in Trenton, including John A. Roebling’s Sons who provided “Jersey”
wire lath to fireproof the ceilings and walls.
To
design the new school, the Board of Education hired architect Ernest K. Sibley
of Palisades. Sibley’s previous work in Trenton included the Gothic
Revival Dunn Middle School on Dayton Street and the Colonial Revival Holland
Middle School on West State Street. For TCHS, Sibley adapted his
design of the Holland School and magnified it on a much grander scale. The
Chambers Street façade featured a broad central wing attached to two smaller
yet proportional wings, with towers surmounting each of the three wings. This
long, stately composition is dominated by a central colonnaded pavilion with
Ionic columns. A physical education wing was attached to the rear of the main
section, and behind that was a boiler house. Overall, the school’s
symmetrical proportions combined red brick and limestone in a monumental
Georgian design.
The
facades of the two wings were embellished with four niches that were
intentionally left vacant. They were intended to be filled with
statues of school graduates- “poets, statesmen, philosophers, inventors- in
fact, anyone who benefits mankind” according to Mayor
Donnelly. Still, TCHS has had no shortage of famous alumni who could
fill the niches, including composer and pianist George Antheil, tenor Richard
Crooks and baseball players George Case and Al Downing.
Inside the school, the central building had an auditorium
with a seating capacity for 1500. Rich velour draperies hung in the
proscenium arch, and the lighting fixtures, which are still intact, featured
light bulb cups made of Lenox china. In addition to a main school
library, TCHS had three additional small department or “branch” libraries
stocked with books on specific disciplines. If that weren’t enough,
the Briggs Branch of the Trenton Public Library also occupied space in the
Hamilton Avenue wing. Works of art and sculpture, including a Lucca della
Robbia frieze, a bust of Queen Victoria, and tile mosaics in the main hallway,
embellished the interior in order to “surround the students…with a beauty that
will contribute to their spiritual as well as their mental development.”
Athletic
fields behind the school could accommodate, depending on the season, baseball,
football, field hockey, soccer, tennis and track. TCHS featured four
gymnasiums, one for boys, one for girls, plus two “corrective” gymnasiums
specifically intended “to correct outstanding physical defects such as bad
posture, round shoulders and other physical conditions that interfere with a
pupil’s proper development.”
Home
economics also played an important role in the new school. Superintendent
Dr. William J. Bickett, a strong advocate of a clean and thrifty household,
ensured that TCHS came equipped with a two-room apartment with bath, all “with
customary furniture and furnishings.” The ultimate goal of the home
economics courses, according to the department supervisor, “aims to help youth
to meet efficiently the personal and home problems they encounter, and points
to ways of attaining desirable improved conditions, to the end that they may
become ‘artists in living.’”
Originally
built for an enrollment of 3000 students, the building was constructed with an
eye to expansion. Additions to the school could be easily built on
the school’s expansive campus, and the standard size classrooms could be easily
reconfigured. When the school opened, the Board of Education
projected that one day the school could be expanded to hold up to 5000
students. The school’s first and only expansion occurred in 1957 with the
addition of a vocational building to the Greenwood Avenue wing.
During
the public conference held at the Trenton Board of Education, the New Jersey
Schools Construction Corporation (SCC), a state agency created to oversee new
school projects in low-income, presented options to either rehabilitate or
demolish the school and build anew. The architectural firm of Clarke
Caton Hintz has already drawn up plans for a sensitive rehabilitation of the
school.
