Schools opened this week and youngsters from kindergarten to twelfth grade filed into clean classrooms to greet old friends and begin new learning adventures. This year, in the Newburgh School District, there are thirteen school buildings opening their doors. You can find their names and locations on the school district website.

Fifty years ago, there were seventeen schools. Many local people recall their teachers welcoming them into the now-closed hallways of Liberty Street School, Washington Street School, Winona Lake School and Union Grove School. Their parents and grandparents can tell about other temporary expansion classrooms that were tucked around Newburgh during periods of quick population growth: Cacossa’s Market on Route 52 converted part of its grocery store building into a classroom when the families out near Orange Lake discovered there was no room for their youngsters. A.M.E. Zion Church on Washington Street offered kindergarten class in its basement community room. I’m sure there were others that can be remembered.

The oldest school location in Newburgh is 137 Montgomery Street, currently occupied by Horizons-on-the-Hudson Elementary School. That mid-twentieth century brick building, designed by Newburgh architect Gordon Marvel, stands where an earlier Montgomery Street Elementary School stood. The old was demolished to make way for the new. The old Montgomery Street School had a life before it held grade school kids. It was Newburgh Free Academy. It was actually an address that saw two NFA’s – one from 1796 and one built ninety years later. As population grew and neighborhoods expanded westward through the city in the 1920’s, the decision was made to build a totally new high school on the corner of Fullerton Avenue and South Street. The former NFA on Montgomery Street was outfitted to be an elementary school and so it remained for over 30 years.

Physically, it was a wonder to behold. Few remember it now. It was four stories of brick, designed and constructed with amazing detail. That second NFA – it replaced an 18th century frame schoolhouse on the same site - was the jewel of Newburgh schools. On September 2, 1886, our teenagers first walked through the doors of the spacious and long-awaited “new” Academy to register. Elegant brick arches surrounded the deep doorways and high windows. Twin sets of granite steps led to double entrances. Deep carvings adorned both stone and wood trim. A tall cupola and weathervane could be seen over the treetops from blocks away. A school custodian and his wife greeted the teens and, when the day was done, climbed the stairs to their apartment in the south turret of the building.

After generations of crowding into the village’s two-story wood frame Academy located at that same site, students now had four stories of space including a gymnasium and laboratories among the twenty-one classrooms. All the main classrooms were outfitted with 45 desks.

Newburgh Free Academy offered a three-year curriculum for students intending to work after graduation and a fourth year that concentrated on languages and higher mathematics for college entrance students. When it opened, the Board of Education also instituted a free book system so that all textbooks were given to students for their use during the year as they still are today. Previously, many families didn’t send their children to school or didn’t keep them there because of the cost of purchasing their books.

There was another school opening in 1886. The same year the new Newburgh Free Academy opened on Montgomery Street, the Manual Training School opened around the corner on Clinton Street. That school building (still standing and now in private ownership) was built in 1848 as a grammar school but in 1886 was outfitted as a trade school with equipment to learn carpentry and masonry. A specially trained instructor, William J. Woods from the Worchester Technical Institute, was employed to teach these building trades. Boys in the vocational program there at 87 Clinton Street walked to class at the Manual Training School from all over the city.

The 18th century wooden Academy building was sold to the hamlet of Roseton for $333 and was dismantled and reassembled there north of Newburgh and used for many additional years.
Although our school architecture may change through over time, what goes on inside those walls follows the same principles of free public education that Newburgh embraced from its 18th century roots.