USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 11
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out supervision or accountability, except such as was barely sufficient to comply with the state law. Such was the con- dition of the common schools in 1837."
Serious attention was now given to the matter, and meas- ures for acquiring a better educational system were taken in hand. Legislation to authorize the appointment of a city superintendent of common schools was obtained, and Mr. Roswell W. Haskins, who accepted the office, strove vainly for several months to give it some effect; but the ex- isting law endowed him with no adequate powers, and he resigned. Mr. Steele was then prevailed upon to assume the task of superintendency with the promise from leading citizens of their earnest co-operation in endeavors to secure a more efficient law. General interest in the movement was aroused by a series of public meetings at the old Court House, in the summer of 1838. A committee of four from each of the five wards of the city was appointed at one of these meetings to inquire into the condition of the schools, and to report some plan for their improvement. O. G. Steele, N. K. Hall, Noah H. Gardner, Horatio Shumway, S. N. Callender, Lucius Storrs, were among the active mem- bers of the committee, and Albert H. Tracy presided at all the public meetings.
In September the committee submitted a thoroughly full report, setting forth the wretched state of the schools, ex- posing the dreadful fact that more than half of the children of the city were receiving no education, and urging recom- mendations, the grand feature of which was the creation of a system of entirely free schools, the whole cost of which, over and above the moneys obtained from the State school fund, should be defrayed by a general tax. After long and sharp discussion of the report, at two meetings, this, the vital part of it, was adopted by the general meeting. Amended in some other particulars, the plan sent to the
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FREE-SCHOOL DISTINCTION OF BUFFALO
Common Council, embodying the wish of the assembled citi- zens, provided for a division of the district schools into de- partments, and for a central high school "where all the higher branches necessary for a complete English education shall be taught." The recommended high school was not established until some years later; otherwise the ground work of the public school system of Buffalo, as built up since, was laid substantially by laws and ordinances enacted in 1838-9. Our city has claims to no mean distinction, in the fact of its being the first in the State to establish schools wholly free, supported by a general tax. The older free schools of the city of New York were made so by private generosity, and not by a public act.
It is easy to believe that Mr. Steele was quite within the truth when he wrote, in his account of the important change, that "the office of superintendent of schools, during the or- ganization of the system and the building of the first set of school houses, was one of the most difficult and responsible of the offices under the city government." Undoubtedly he went through a hard experience, especially in having to be the active and visible agent of public measures which laid suddenly new taxes upon the people, and taxes that were not light. The building of five new school houses in the first year of the educational reformation was a heavy bur- den in itself, upon a town which had suffered so great a collapse as that of 1837, only two years before. We need not wonder, as he did not, that "his name was left off the slate for reappointment" in the spring of 1840, when his term expired.
The undesired office was then thrust upon Mr. Dennis Bowen, against his wish, and he resigned it in a few months. From Mr. Bowen it passed to Mr. Silas Kingsley, Mr. S. Caldwell, and Mr. E. S. Hawley, in yearly succession, and returned, in 1845, to Mr. Steele, who put his shoulder to the
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wheel for one more year. In that year he secured the organization of what was then styled the "third department" of the public schools, out of which the Central High School was developed in 1852. This third department was con- ducted at first in part of the school house erected on South Division Street, in District No. 7. A little later it was transferred to the upper floor of School No. 10, on Dela- ware Street, where it remained till the opening of the Cen- tral High School. The principal of the third department, at School No. 10, was Ephraim F. Cook, whose pupils (of whom the present writer was one) regarded him with much affection and little fear. There was little of strictness in the discipline of his school, and not much of system in his teaching, but he did interest his classes in many matters of knowledge, outside as well as inside of text-books, and give a self-educational impulse to their minds.
In 1852 the Central High School was established, in a purchased building, on the site (Court Street and Niagara Square) which it occupies at the time of this writing, but from which it will soon be removed. Plans have been adopted for a noble building, to be erected on spacious and beautiful grounds, fronting on West Chippewa Street, at its junction with Georgia Street, this fine site being a gift to the city by Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Hutchinson. By purchasing a large part of the property that lay between the grounds given and Johnson Park, at the north, the city has perfected the site.
In 1854, on the annexation of Black Rock to Buffalo and the enactment of a new city charter, the office of Superin- tendent, hitherto filled annually by the Common Council, was made elective, as it has remained ever since. The term was lengthened at the same time to two years. The popular election of the head of its school department, and the re- tention in the Common Council of a legislative control of
A. EVOLUTION
fas then styled the "third department" In that year he secured The
di, out of which the Central High School 0 0 1852 This third department was con- Ans in part of the school house erected on South . Street, in District No. 7. A little later it was
terred to the upper floor of School No. (( on Dela- Hoe Street, where it remained till the opening of the Cen- High School The principal of the third department, 0 0% was Ephraim F. Cook, whose pupils (of EDWARD HOWARD HUTCHINSONm with much
Merchant and capitalist; born Buffalo,e NewstystRess in March 7, 1852; educated in public and private schools ofin his Buffalo; director Marine National Bank ; i member of thers of Buffalo Chamber of Commerce ; Buffalo Historical Society ;
chairman of the Finance Committee St. Paul's Protestant
Episcopal Church ; president of the board of trustees of Buffalo City Cemetery, and many other civic and social bodies. Was elected in 1888 Alderman from the Tenth Ward as a Democrat, being the only Democrat ever elected. Lut
in that ward; was fire commissioner and chairman of the been board in 1891-93: member of the Manufacturers'aClubs and Buffalo. Donated, site for, Hutchinson Higherchostreet, at Whitney Place and Chippewa Street, valued at $200,000. treet, this fine site being a gift
Mrs Edward H. Hutchinson By
*ic part of lor property thar lay between and John on Park, at the north, rh
Council
The term
The popular Pect un ra skercet and the re-
tive control of
teilt noin iliCm
EHutchinson
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RECENT EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES
the schools, are features peculiar to the school system of Buffalo. Its excellence is open to doubt. At times in the past it has exposed the schools to mischievous political in- fluences, and may do so again; though such influences have been mostly suppressed in recent years, by a measure of great importance adopted in 1892. This created a Board of School Examiners, by whom all candidates for employ- ment as teachers in the public schools are subjected to exami- nation and their fitness determined. Appointments by the Superintendent must be made from lists of the eligible can- didates reported to him by the board. It is the further duty of the members of the board to visit and inspect the schools with regularity and report upon the conditions found.
The introduction of physical exercises under a regular instructor was another mark of progress in 1892. In the next year the city assumed the expense of providing free text books for all pupils in the schools. A supervisor of primary grades was added that year to the Superintendent's staff. In 1895 manual training was introduced. Instruc- tion in sewing followed, in 1896. A teachers' training school was established that year; a supervisor of grammar grades was appointed, and a beginning was made in the creation of a Teachers' Retirement Fund. In 1897 a sec- ond high school, the Masten Park, was opened; a Truant School was established; free public lectures at the schools, with stereopticon illustration were instituted; school ma- terial used by pupils was made free. In 1898 ten kinder- garten schools, opened and maintained since 1891 by a Free Kindergarten Association, were brought into the public school system. Vacation schools were opened and main- tained by the voluntary service of teachers, and were so carried on for that and the following year. In 1899 an important experiment of alliance and co-operation between the public library and the schools was initiated, by the turn-
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ing of ten school libraries into the public library, the latter replacing them with changeable collections of books from its larger store. From year to year since, this arrangement has been extended to other schools, and forty were thus con- nected with the Public Library in 1910, circulating 400,000 volumes. In 1900 the city took upon itself the support of the vacation schools. In 1902 nearly $40,000 were added to the Teachers' Retirement Fund by the proceeds of a great bazaar. In 1903 a third high school, the Lafayette, was opened, an evening manual training school established, and a business course added to the high school course of study. In 1904 a fourth high school, the Technical, was opened, and a special department of domestic science in- stituted in two grammar schools, centrally placed. The erection of a suitable permanent building for the Technical High School has been a determined resolve for some time, but agreement as to the site of the building was not reached until the latter part of 1910. It is to be excellently placed on Bennett Park, between Clinton and William streets.
The last two years of the late decade were marked by many notable advances and improvements in the work of the public schools, including regular courses of daily lec- tures at the rooms of the Society of Natural Sciences, to which classes from the schools are taken in turn, the lec- turer, Dr. Carlos E. Cummings, being engaged by the So- ciety; the appointment of five medical inspectors and a trained nurse for systematic attention to the physical state of the pupils; the instituting of special instruction for de- fective children, in separated classes; the extension of man- ual training to all schools and classes; and, finally, the opening in September, 1910, of a Vocational School, in the old No. 5 building, on Seneca Street, to be the first, proba- bly, of more, in which seventh and eighth grade boys will be given a two years' practical course preparatory to en- trance on some industrial vocation.
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THE SCHOOL ASSOCIATION
An important wakening of general interest in the public schools, which appeared in the closing years of the late century, brought about the formation of a School Associa- tion, constituted by the election of delegates to it from a large number of widely different organizations in the city- literary, scientific, social, commercial and political. Mr. Henry A. Richmond was made president of the association, and its main work during a number of years after 1896 was performed by a visiting committee, which had for its chair- man for a time, until Columbia University called him, Pro- fessor Frank M. McMurry, then principal of the Franklin School. The more active members of the committee, in a quite prolonged service, were Mrs. Lucien Howe, Mrs. John S. Noyes, Mrs. Herman Mynter, Mrs. Charles Ken- nedy, Mrs. Arthur Millinowski, Miss Maria M. Love, Mrs. Lily Lord Tifft, Mrs. Frank H. Severance, Mr. Henry A. Richmond, Dr. P. W. Van Peyma, Mr. Isadore Michael, Dr. T. M. Crowe, Dr. Dewitt H. Sherman, and Mr. J. N. Larned.
The first and most important work of the committee was a very thorough examination of the public school buildings, and an elaborate report to the public of defective and often dangerous conditions found in them. By pursuing this ex- amination from year to year, and urging and re-urging specific facts upon the attention of the authorities and the public, the School Association was able to bring about ex- tensive changes for the better in matters connected with safety from fire, ventilation and heating, light, overcrowd- ing, and many other particulars. The results obtained were not only a bettering of the old buildings in use, but an im- provement of the construction of new ones. Not working intrusively, but in cordial co-operation with the School De- partment and the Bureau of Buildings, the association per- formed a very highly useful work.
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
The present Superintendent of Education, Henry P. Em- erson, has held the office, by repeated election (latterly for a term of four years), since 1893. His administration has greatly improved the schools. The quality and character of the teaching force has been raised and a different spirit put into its work. A Women Teachers' Association, formed in 1889, is an organization for self-improvement which shows no relaxation of vigor after more than twenty years. It has owned its own building, named the Chapter House, containing lecture hall and parlors, since 1895. The men teachers have been organized in a Principals' Associa- tion, for meetings to discuss school topics, for many years. The department throughout shows manifest life.
According to the annual report of the Superintendent, made in December, 1910, the total registration of pupils in the public schools was 62,651; the average attendance 46,463. The report of the previous year had shown a total registration of 62,217, of whom 49,070 were born in Buf- falo, but only 29,704 are entered as of "American nation- ality," the remainder being of German, Polish, Irish, Italian, Scandinavian and Canadian extraction. The teachers employed in 1910 numbered 1,580, of whom 1,484 were women and 96 were men; 54 of the latter being prin- cipals of schools.
In the high schools the registration of 1910 was 4,458, of which 2,262 was of boys. The average daily attendance was 3,702. The pupils of American parentage in the high schools in 1909 numbered 2,971.
Full statistics of the attendance in schools outside of the public school system are not attainable, there being no ob- ligatory report. The Superintendent of Education collects them annually as far as he can do so, and has reported for 1910, 23,846 pupils in 74 private and parochial schools.
Adding this number to that of the pupils registered in the
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STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
public schools makes a total of 86,497 children under educa- tion to some extent in the city. By a school census in 1906, the children between 5 and 18 years of age in the city num- bered 84,530.
The evening schools of 1909-10 registered 8,947 pupils ; the vacation schools 3,600.
The State Normal School in Buffalo was opened in 1871, occupying a building erected at the cost of the city and county, on a fine square of high ground, substantially but not wholly given for the purpose by Jesse Ketchum, a ven- erable friend of the schools. The Normal School was or- ganized and conducted until 1886 by Principal H. B. Buck- ham, with an excellent staff. During part of this period the faculty included one, in the person of Professor William Bull Wright, who impressed himself upon the school and upon all who knew him in a remarkable way, leaving one of those memories which seem to give distinction and char- acter to some few favored years in the past of a town. It was only for a few years that we had this wise young scholar, poet, philosopher among us, for Death called him early; but he planted an influence that has stayed.
Principal Buckham was succeeded by Dr. James M. Cas- sety, who came from the Cortland Normal School, and who, in turn, has been succeeded recently by Mr. Daniel Upton, previously principal of the Technical High School of the city.
By the ambitions that were embodied long ago in its charter, by the dignity of its name and by the courage of the great hopes which it still inspires, the University of Buffalo has claims to the leading place in a survey of the educational institutions that have risen in the city outside of the system of its free public schools. The pity is that it cannot take that place in a commanding way. It has stood
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in our history for more than sixty years as the project of a university, and is realized now in but four departments, of professional education: Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry and Law.
There were plans for the founding of a University of Buffalo in the excitedly generous minds of the bold specu- lators of 1835-36. Those schemes vanished in the bubble- bursting of 1837, but came to thought again in 1846, with a special stimulation from the very able physicians of that day in Buffalo, who desired the establishment of a medical school. Such notable men of the profession as Frank H. Hamilton, Austin Flint, James P. White and Charles A. Lee were undoubtedly prime movers in the incorporation of the University of Buffalo, which laid a broad foundation for the school they were prepared to undertake.
The story of its origin was told in a recent address to the Alumni of the University by its then vice-chancellor, Mr. Charles P. Norton.
"Some professional and business men," said Mr. Norton, "met in a dingy little office on Main Street, to discuss whether it would be practicable to establish a college, a university or a medical school in Buffalo. Although then as now there were plenty to point out the folly and useless- ness of such a great undertaking, to the credit of the medical profession be it said that the physicians present, after hot debate, persuaded the meeting to attempt, not only a med- ical school, but a university with academic, theological and medical departments. Accordingly, on May 11, 1846, a university charter was granted by the Legislature, authoriz- ing a capital of $100,000, and requiring the organization of some kind of a college within three years; providing that $20,000 of stock should be subscribed for and ten per cent. paid down. It was decided to start the movement with a medical school, and, in the summer of 1846, $20,000 was
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THE BUFFALO UNIVERSITY
subscribed to the stock and ten per cent. paid in by the medical faculty, aided by patriotic citizens. The physi- cians did not stop there. During the next eighteen months they secured subscriptions from one hundred and thirty citizens, varying in amount from $20 to $500, though aver- aging $100. This subscription aggregated $12,000. With it they bought one hundred feet of land on Main Street by 200 feet on Virginia Street, and erected there the medical college building, dedicated November 7, 1849, which stood during so many years for all there was of the University of Buffalo."
The lists of the incorporators and of the original council of the University show how well the undertaking was sup- ported by the best men of the city. The council was com- posed as follows: Millard Fillmore, chancellor; Joseph G. Masten, Thomas M. Foote, Isaac Sherman, Gaius B. Rich, Ira A. Blossom, William A. Bird, George W. Clin- ton, George R. Babcock, Theodotus Burwell, James O. Putnam, Herman A. Tucker, John D. Shepard, Elbridge G. Spaulding, Orson Phelps, Orsamus H. Marshall. Mil- lard Fillmore held the position of chancellor for twenty- eight years. His successors in the office have been, Orsa- mus H. Marshall, 1874-84; E. Carleton Sprague, 1885-95; James O. Putnam, 1895-1902; Wilson S. Bissell, 1902-03; Charles P. Norton, vice-chancellor and chancellor, 1903-
The Department of Medicine was organized in the year of the incorporation of the University, with a faculty com- posed of Doctors James Hadley, Charles B. Coventry, James Webster, Charles A. Lee, Frank H. Hamilton, James P. White, Austin Flint, Corydon L. Ford. The five gentlemen first named held chairs in the Geneva Medical College, which held sessions in the early part of the winter, and the session at Buffalo came later. Lectures were given during the first three years in the old First Baptist Church,
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at the corner of Washington and Seneca streets. Mean- time a substantial building for the college was erected, of brown stone, at the corner of Main and Virginia streets. This was occupied in 1849, and from that year till 1893, when the Medical Department entered into possession of its present fine building, on High Street, erected at a cost of $130,000.
In the faculty of the earlier years, Dr. White served thirty-five years, Dr. Thomas F. Rochester thirty-four, Dr. George Hadley (who filled his father's chair) thirty-two and Dr. Edward M. Moore thirty. The faculty of later times has included many of eminence in the local profes- sion, among them Doctors William H. Mason, Charles Cary, Julius F. Miner, Matthew D. Mann, Roswell Park, Charles G. Stockton, John Parmenter.
Since 1898, an important pathological laboratory, devoted specially to the study of cancer, has been connected with the Medical Department of the University, receiving State aid. In 1901 Mrs. W. H. Gratwick, and a few other friends of the work, erected a beautiful building for the laboratory on High Street, and it has been named the Gratwick Research Laboratory. Its director is Dr. Ros- well Park.
For forty years after the incorporation of the University of Buffalo it was represented by the Department of Medi- cine alone. Then, in 1886, the Department of Pharmacy was added, and has been conducted with success.
Five years later, in 1891, the Buffalo Law School, which had been organized in 1887 and affiliated for a time with the University of Niagara, became a Department of Law in the University of Buffalo. This school has a record of remarkably good work. In the last two years every grad- uate it has sent to the State examining board has passed and received his diploma.
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THE BUFFALO UNIVERSITY
The latest permanent addition to the University was made, by the organization of the Department of Dentistry, in 1892. Its classes have been very large; so large as to require at the end of four years a building for itself, which was erected on Goodrich Street, contiguous to the main University building, at a cost of $36,000; and this building needed the addition of a fourth story in 1902. Much of the success of the school is attributed to its leading organizer and first dean, Dr. William C. Barrett, who died in 1903.
A School of Pedagogy, established as a fifth department of the University in 1895, was discontinued in 1898 for lack of adequate support. It had been founded by a number of liberal friends of education with the hope that it might develop into a department of arts, and they bore the con- siderable cost of it bravely for the three years. With Pro- fessor Frank M. McMurry (later of the Teachers' College, Columbia) at its head, and Professor Herbert G. Lord (also of Columbia, later) in its faculty, its work was of the highest order, and would have won a firm footing for it in time ; but it needed a permanent endowment to give it the needed time, and that was not secured. The dissolution of this school was one of the serious losses of the city.
Within the last few years a most resolute endeavor to put the University on a broader foundation of endowment, and to uplift it into broader and more inspiring fields of work, has been led by Chancellor Norton, with great promise of success. A fine site of one hundred acres on the northern border of the city, now occupied by the Almshouse, has been secured by purchase from the county, and this gives a hope- ful footing of practicality to the undertaking. Hundreds of the rising generation of leading spirits in the city are enlisted in it, heart and soul, and they do not mean to fail. By an act of the State Legislature of 1910 the city of Buf- falo is authorized to appropriate $75,000 annually to the
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support of enlarged undertakings for higher education by the University, and the act has been officially approved by the Mayor and Common Council.
In 1840 the Rev. J. A. A. Grabau and the German Lu- theran Synod of Buffalo established the German Martin Luther Theological Seminary, for the education and train- ing of German Lutheran pastors. The seminary was opened in a private house on Goodell Street, but trans- ferred in 1854 to a building erected for it on Maple Street, Nos. 153-4, which it occupies at the present day. It is supported by the forty congregations of the Lutheran Synod of Buffalo.
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