CHAPTER II
The Normal School
1848 to 1890
marked an important turning point in the
history of the Normal School. On the
morning of New Year’s Day 1848, David
Page died after a week's illness. His students
were grief-sticken. One wrote her mother that “I can hardly write. I feel
almost as though I could bid good bye to Albany, and leave the
Normal school forever. The school will go on as usual but our beloved
principal will not be there. Many will be the tears shed on this
occasion for his friends are not a few.” The student was correct, for the
school did go on. A few months after Page’s death the Legislature
made the Normal School a permanent part of New York's educational
system.
The Normal School experiment had not been universally supported.
Among the skeptics were “teachers of the old style” who resented the
new educational ideas being promulgated at Albany. Indeed, Page had to
dramatically ward off a hostile resolution at the 1846 Rochester meeting
(Opposite) A group of women students in
a boarding house on Elm Street, one of the
“suitable homes” identified by the School for
its students in 1886. Women were members
of the student body from the School's found-
ing. All students lived in boarding houses
until 1918. (Alumni Memorabilia Collection.)
25
i
j
i
t
The faculty circa 1850: George R. Perkins,
Principal from 1848 to 1852, is in the center
of the front row. Among the faculty pictured
are believed to be Truman Bowen, "46;
Darwin Eaton, '46; Elizabeth Hance, '45;
Louisa Ostrom, ’47, William Phelps, '45;
Sumner Webb, ’45.
26
of the newly organized New York
State Teachers Association. The aca-
demies, too, disliked the Normal
School's competition for limited
state teacher education funds. But
support for the Normal School
experiment grew. Its location in
Albany proved important, as poten-
tial opponents such as Governor
Silas Wright and other legislators
were won over by visits to the insti-
tution. National educational leaders
like Mann wrote warmly of the
Albany experiment. Support was
bolstered by evidence of the School’s success. Enrollments were good,
and students quickly entered the ranks of common school teachers to
demonstrate the benefits of teacher training at Albany. The Executive
Committee conscientiously reported on the School’s success to the
Legislature. The reports also demonstrated that the affairs of the School
were conducted with prudence; the financial statements showed annual
expenditures of between $12,000 and $14,000 with state funding
supplemented by the tuition income from the model school. The ,
Legislature's action in 1848 was no surprise.
The permanence of the Normal School was also marked by the
construction of its second building. In 1849 a $28,500 structure rose
on the corner of Lodge and Howard Streets. The new building, 126 feet
on Lodge and eighty-eight feet on Howard, had a basement and four
stories. It was fairly advanced by the standards of the day; three large
furnaces in the basement plus four strategically located stoves provided
heat, and an eighty-hogshead “filtering cistern” supplied water. The
Executive Committee viewed the corner lot as “a great advantage,” for it
afforded “separate entrances for the sexes . . .” Almost from the
beginning the new building proved troublesome, however. In January
of 1852 during midyear exercises the gathered throng on the top floor
assembly room panicked when movernent occurred in the floor. Fortunately
no one was injured. The incident provoked a legislative investigation.
But the floor was strengthened, the stairs were repaired, and the
Executive Committee seized the opportunity to introduce water and gas
throughout the building. Further modifications were made in 1865
when the work of the Normal School was concentrated on the third
and fourth floors, separated from the model school on the lower floors.
David Page’s death meant new leadership for the Normal School.
His first four successors served a total of nineteen years; all had
distinguished careers after they left Albany. The next two Presidents
served for twenty-two years, devoting the culminating years of their
careers to Albany. Each Principal/President made his contribution;
The construction of the building at Lodge and
Howard streets in 1849 symbolized the
permanent status the School achieved that
year. The building with separate entrances for
men and women served as the home of the
Normal School until 1885.
27
k
‘
Four Priricipals/Presidents of the 19th-Century
Normal School: Samuel B. Woolworth, 1852
to 1856 (top); David H. Cochran, 1856 to
1864 (bottom); Oliver Arey, 1864 to 1867
(opposite page top); and Joseph Alden, 1867
to 1882 (opposite page bottom), the first
person to hold the title of President.
28
together they maintained a remarkable degree of continuity in the
history of the institution,
Page’s immediate successor was his cousin, George Perkins, who
had actually been the first faculty person hired in 1844. Perkins had the
misfortune to preside over the panic that occurred during midyear
exercises in January of 1852. The subsequent legislative investigation
uncovered evidence that several faculty were critical of Perkins for a
variety of reasons: frequent absences, using school time for his own
private purposes, adopting some of his own books as texts contrary to
the wishes of his associates, and occupying a state-supplied residence.
The Executive Committee, however, praised Perkins when he resigned
in the Fall of 1852 to serve as a mathematician in the on-going
consolidation of a number of railroads into the New York Central. He
also later served as a member of the Board of Regents.
The next Principal, Samuel Woolworth, served from 1852 to February
1856, when he resigned to become Secretary of the Board of Regents.
David Cochran had been professor of natural sciences at the Normal
School for a year and a half before being chosen Principal. The first
head of the school with a Ph.D., he resigned in 1864 to become
president of Brooklyn Polytechnic and Collegiate Institute. Cochran’s
successor, Oliver Arey, was notable chiefly because he came into serious
conflict with the faculty over issues that remain obscure. He left in
January of 1867 to assume the principalship of the state normal school
in Whitewater, Wisconsin.
The Executive Committee had difficulty in finding a successor to
Arey; the post was offered to and rejected by at least three different
men. But the Rev. Joseph Alden accepted the position in 1867 and
stayed until his retirement in 1882. He was the first head of the Normal
School to carry the title of “President,” a change not made at other New
York normal schools until a century later, Alden was well-qualified for
the position in terms of both education and experience. He had an
undergraduate degree from Union College and a D.D. from Princeton,
and before coming to Albany had taught at Williams College and had
served for a decade as president of Jefferson College in Pennsylvania.
Edward P. Waterbury, 49, who became President in 1882, was the
first head of the institution who was an Albany graduate, having
|
|
I
i
|
!
i
i
received his training under Page and Perkins. He had taught English at
the Albany Academy for more than a decade and had served concurrently
for eighteen months as a member of the School’s Executive Committee,
His death in 1889 was to mark the end of the Normal School era.
The various Principals and Presidents presided over a Normal
School of modest size. In 1861, for example, there were 208 students
enrolled; a decade later the average daily attendance was 275. Between
1850 and 1885, the School annually graduated sixty-five to seventy
students, largely because of the limitations of the Lodge Street building,
but the numbers of graduates surged upward in the 1880s and 1890s.
Since many students enrolled for only a term or two, enrollments were
always higher than suggested by the number of graduates.
The mission of the institution was clear: training teachers for
common schools. Almost from the beginning, students were required
to sign a pledge that it was their “intention to devote ourselves to the
business of teaching district schools, and that our sole purpose in
resorting to this Normal School is the better to prepare ourselves for
that important duty.” It was a commitment, explicitly or implicitly, that
incoming students were to make for more than a century. An Assembly
committee in 1852 suggested that students who did not teach should
pay a tuition charge of $15 per term as “literary” students. No requirement
was ever imposed, although Principal Perkins reported that one student
desiring release from the pledge had indeed paid tuition.
The curriculum and educational practices established by David Page
were little altered over the years. The School continued to operate with
two terms each year. The curriculum, organized into a two-year program
offered in four terms, changed litle, and the faculty tried at all times to
integrate the instruction in subject matter and teaching methods. Daily
gymnastic exercises were introduced in 1858 out of a concern for the
health and vigor of the students and because of the growing attention to
the subject in schools. Proper facilities were lacking, however; as the
Executive Committee noted, “Great inconvenience . . . is experienced
from want of proper room and apparatus.” President Alden in the late
1860s introduced more philosophy and government into the curriculum,
but the course of instruction showed more continuity than change. All
students received a-good deal of actual teaching experience in the
29
William Jones, 68, was professor of mathe:
matics from 1869 to 1890, and later became
the first principal of the model high school
operated by the Normal College in 1890.
30
Experimental School and the Primary School. The former, often referred
to as the “model” or “practice” school, was a standard common school
of the period. The latter, a kind of kindergarten begun in 1862,
enrolled children between ages five and seven. The children attending
the schools paid tuition; hence the schools were at least self-sustaining
and at times profitable. The student-teachers were rotated through the
various levels, had daily conferences with the superintendent, and
wrote a lengthy report on the conditions of the class, methods, and
other topics.
The level of subject-matter instruction remains controversial. An
eatly description of the School noted that “The course of instruction
thus far has been strictly elementary . . .” Indeed, the Executive
Committee in 1860 defended the curriculum on pragmatic and democratic
grounds. “To extend or elevate the course beyond what it now is, would
be to put its completion beyond the time and means of most of those
who now graduate; and more, it would simply educate the few who
complete it beyond even the reach.of the higher schools, on account of
the limited demand for such teachers, and the insufficient compensation
offered them.”
Still, there is evidence that the instruction rose far above common
school levels. There was much emphasis on writing, with each student
expected to write six compositions each term. Male seniors got some
field exercises with surveying and engineering instruments. A student
from the 1850s later recalled that science Professor James Salisbury had
on one occasion displayed a complete skeleton of a turtle in its shell
from which he had dissected the flesh the night before. On another
occasion, Salisbury showed the class a quantity of arsenic he had
extracted from the stomach of a woman upon whom he had been called
to perform an autopsy.
Would-be graduates were required to pass comprehensive final
examinations. In the early years these examinations were public occasions
that generated sizable audiences from the community. Questions used
on examinations were reprinted in the 1860s, and one is impressed
with the level of knowledge that was expected in some areas, notably
mathematics.
Page’s philosophy of education had emphasized the importance of
morality and character development. His
successors agreed with him and sought to infuse
both instruction and extra-curricular life with
moral training which often had religious
overtones. Students often sang “a song of praise”
during their opening exercises. In the 1880s
there were two weekly prayer meetings, one
for men and one for women. Mrs. Edward
Cameron, '90, later recalled that President
Waterbury thought thar students studying to
be teachers should strictly adhere to religious
tenets and encouraged them to play and sing
hymns (to which they occasionally waltzed!).
While students were not required to attend
church services, most reportedly did.
After the School’s first year, instruction
was carried on by a faculty that numbered
between ten and twenty, some graduates of
the institution. There was some degree of subject
specialization, but everyone taught more than
one subject. In the 1850s a large percentage
were men, but during and after the Civil War
women appeared in larger numbers, often
dominating at least the lower ranks of the
faculty. By the 1880s, women outnumbered
men by two to one. Increasing numbers of
men held advanced degrees; only one woman
held such a degree since women had very few
opportunities to acquire them.
In 1883, male professors were paid about
$1,800 per year, women about half that amount.
Still, when Alden retired in 1882 the women
faculty commended him for the “pronounced
and liberal views he entertains and practically
exemplifies toward the advancement of woman
{sic] in the teacher's profession.” They
Katherine Stoneman
“Kate Stoneman, Class of 1866, might be. considered a woman
-_ before-het time. However, she was very much a woman who impacted
on her own era. Her graduation from the State Normal School began
a career that spanned forty years of teaching, brought firsts to the legal.
_ profession, and strengthenedthe fight for women’s suffrage. Shortly
after graduation: Stoneman: returned to her alma mater to teach
geography, drawing, and penmanship: However it was not long before
het interests began: to widen. She entered the women’s stiffrage
“movement and: actively lobbied the State Legislature to advance the
Habs ‘of women.
In 1882, after being named executtix,for a large estate, Stoneman
became interested in the law and-worked asa clerk in the office of a
local attorney. While continuing to teach, she studied law at night,
on weekends, and during the summer. In 1886, Stonemain passed
her law ‘exams.on the first attempt but was denied admission to the
bar because of her sex; Undaunted, Stoneman used her lobbying
skills to support the passage of legislation which allowed women to
practice law in New York State, She established @ law office in 1867;
while continuing to teach at the Normal School, and she-was listed
as a lawyerin the Albany’ City ‘Directory until. 1922. Stoneman
~ completed her formal legal education ten years later when she was.
'P} i
the first womait’ to. be admitted to the Albany. Law School as ‘a
“special student,” earning her J.D, in 1898. Subsequent law school
catalogs announced that women were how eligible for admission on
et regular basis. Stoneman ‘had once. again opened opportunities for
women!
Stoneman was. secretary of the ‘Wotnen’s ‘Suffrage. Society of
Albany and ssetvéd as a poll
watcher in the 1918 election,
the» first’ in: which
. women could vote.
Kate Stoneman's
influence echoes
today in New
York's» legal
profession and
- legacy vof< the
women’s tights
she helped to
forge. -Recog-
nizing this, Goy-
ernor Cuome
declared May 22,
1986, Katherine.
Stoneman Day. in
honor, of the. one
hundiedth anniversary of |
her‘admission to the bar,
Civil War
During the Civil War, students from State Normal School endured their toughest
course evér: histoty-in-the-making as soldiers. Nearly one.out of five, men (106 of 583)
who graduated before 1863 served in the conflict. Eighteen of them died.
The best known group was formed in 1862, when students and alumni-became
the.core of a company called the Forty-fourth New York Volunteers, which participated
in seventeen battles in the war. The company was put together by two professors:
Rodney Kimball and Albert N. Husted, ’55, both of the mathemiatics department.
The faculty of the school outfitted each: officer with a revolver, while graduates and
friends contributed rioney to-buy a rubber blanket for each Normal School member.
For three weeks the men had drilling and. guard duty at a neatby barracks before
heading off to war. :
Captain Kimball commanded the company at the Battle of Fredericksburg‘and left
the regiment-in April 1863 after being wounded. He returned to. the State Normal
School and taught until 1869. Lieutenant Husted was slightly wounded at the Battle of
Chancellorsville and promoted to captain: before the company was mustered out of
service in 1864. He went onto teach at the Normal School and: College’ wntil.1912,
regularly addressing history classes on his war experiences. 4
Records also indicate that four State Normal School students served in the Confederate
army, one of whom died in battle. Oné alumna, Phoebe Barnard, Class of 1847, left
her Washington County teaching job to serve asa nurse in the war, stationed at the
U.S, General Hospital in: Frederick, Maryland. There she witnessed many of battle’s
realities. “My poor boys are trembling in their shoes about these times, for orders have
come for all able-bodied men to be sent to the front,” she wrote her sister.on Jan. 12,
1865. “My heart aches for them—O cruel, cruel war!”
Albany students inthe Civil War: (below, . Faculty members Albert N. Husted, ’55
left to tight) Thompson Barrich, '6!,-J. (top right); and Rodnéy.G. Kimball (right)
Oscar Blakely,-'62,'and Andress, B. Hull, led the Normal School company in the
‘62, led “colored troops” in the war. (Un+ Civil War. They fought at the battles of
identified autograph: book, 1860-61; auto- Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,
graph album of Helen, Sherwood, '63.) Gettysburg, and: Cold Harbor.
particularly appreciated his views about women’s “right to a recompense,
paid for the work done and not to the sex of the worker...”
Alumni later recalled their teachers with both respect and affection.
Faculty photographs and signatures regularly appear in autograph books
kept by students in the 1850s and 1860s. Both warmth and respect
show through the often sentimental or humorous alumni(ae) reminiscences
of faculty such as Albert N. Husted and Kate Stoneman.
From its beginning the Normal School drew its students from
throughout the state. Each county was entitled to twice as many pupils
as it had representatives in the Assembly, and the students were
appointed initially by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction on
recommendation of the school commissioners. When school
commissioners failed to make recommendations, the classes were filled
with “volunteers.” In any one year perhaps three-quarters of the counties
sent students to Albany, but a disproportionately large number in fact
came from Albany and Rensselaer counties. Of the first 4,000 graduates
only fourteen came from outside New York State.
The Normal School sought young people who would become good
teachers, and with admirable egalitarianism Samuel Young told school
commissioners in 1844 that “The general intellectual & scientific
requirements, the purity of moral character, the amenity of disposition,
& the capacity to communicate instruction should be the only passports.
Neither sect, nor creed, nor party, nor poverty, nor riches, nor connexions
[sic] should have the least influence on the selection.”
Still, not all who applied were accepted. The Executive Committee
in 1862 decried deficiencies in “the elementary branches, reading,
writing, spelling, geography, and composition” and moved toward the
development of admissions standards. Females were to be not less
than sixteen years old, males not less than eighteen. Prospective students
had to “furnish satisfactory evidence of good moral character,” usually
by a letter from the district school commissioner or the student's
pastor. Finally, there was an entrance examination in “spelling, reading,
writing, geography, arithmetic and English grammar.” Between 5 and
20 percent of the applicants failed the examination, surprisingly high
for a relatively select group, many with teaching experience. After
1882, applicants could submit a certificate attesting that they had
33
passed the Regents’ examinations in the appropriate subjects.
t i Female students were welcomed from the beginning. Governor
William H. Seward saw women as “the natural guardians of the young,”
and lauded them for their “enduring patience . . . higher purity. . . and
H elevated moral feelings.” The Executive Committee agreed; female teachers,
! they observed, were needed to “secure for our youth . . . those refining
and chastening influences which can only be exerted by the woman,
and without which no education, and no manly character can attain its
most beautiful proportions.” But earlier the Committee had also astutely
observed that the rising percentage of female applicants
could be attributed to the more “inviting and rapid
avenues to enterprise and wealth which opens [sic] to
young men...” The Civil War accelerated female
enrollments; by the early 1860s there were perhaps twice
as many young women as men at the School. Nearly 70
i } Caroline G. Parker and Nicholson Henry Parker,
two of the Native American students who attended
Albany from 1851 to 1853 as part of an experi-
mental program funded by the Legislature “for the
support and education of . . . Indian youths.”
t Caroline Parker taught and Nicholson Parker acted
as interpreter for the Iroquois Nation. (Reproduced
from Arthur C. Parker, The Life of General Ely S.
Parker, Buffalo, N.Y.: Buffalo Historical Society,
1919.)
34
i
|
{
|
\
7
\
percent of the graduates during the School’s first half-century were
women. It was all part of the larger feminization of American common
school education that occurred in the late 19th Century.
By late 20th Century standards the students admitted were remarkably
homogeneous. Nearly all were white. There were almost no identifiable
African-Americans. One Japanese student, Senzaburo Kodzu of Tokyo,
was admitted in 1875 on recommendation of David Murray, the American
superintendent of education in Japan, and graduated in the Class of
1877. In the 1850s the School undertook an experiment in educating
Native Americans. For several years the Legislature made an appropriation
“for the support and education of ten Indian youths.” Some twenty-six
Native Americans attended at various times, but the only graduate was
Harriet E. Twoguns of the Cattaraugus Reservation, who was awarded
her degree in 1865. She taught Southern blacks for several years
before marrying.
Still, in terms of age and experience the student body was often very
heterogeneous. Martha Fearey Gay, '58, recalled that in her class “were
a widow and her son, both practiced teachers, and a widower over forty,
while the youths were men who worked the farm in the summer.” Most
students attended for only a term or two before resuming their teaching
in district schools. The average age of the students was always somewhat
higher than the minima. Perhaps only 30 to 40 percent of those
admitted actually graduated.
In the 1840s the simple task of traveling to Albany posed problems.
William Phelps recalled later that his 1844 journey from Auburn to
Albany involved “two days of traveling over [a] rickety flat car railroad”
with an overnight stay in Syracuse. D. E. Whitmore, '46, recalled riding a
canal boat drawn by two weary horses from Utica to Schenectady and then
taking a railroad operating on wooden rails to Albany. For many students,
coming to Albany must have been a lonely and frightening experience.
Willis Graves, ’79, recalled his first day at the School: “. . . alone in
backroom, third floor, Dove street, facing the east we stand in the evening,
looking out upon the gas-lit city. The wind from the frozen north dashes
the snow against the pane. We have no light in the room, preferring to
drown our lonesomeness in the feeble rays which steal in from the moon
. +. Tomorrow we are to enter the Albany Normal School . . .”
(Top) Senzaburo Kodzu, '77, a Japanese
student, was the only known international
student to attend the Albany Normal School.
He returned to Japan where he published
widely on western music and became a leader
in the normal school movement,
(Bottom) Edward B. Horton, '86, (in a 1944
photo), was typical of Normal School grad-
uates in his long teaching and administrative
career in public education
35
. sari ™%
Programs from the Philomathean Society for 2 ” :
women and the Gentleman’s Literary Societies,
both founded in the early 1870s. Such “literary Boas ce id day oe
societies” were the principal form of student pene SOV,
organization in the late 19th Century. wok epee A : : :
Page |
PRAY RE,
“MUSIC. 0055. /Cose Brotinens Tune rive Lay.”
DOUBLE QUARTETTE, He
PeMStOUNT's anoknse,
THSSAV, 0 0ccshievh ey pose 4Hinto Wongit”
HENRY D. KERR, N.L, U., Now York Clty.
ORATION cis oi THe Decay or Estrin.”
IRA D. HORTON, 1, 0. of N., Putnam Co,
MUSIC. cece gece MElome's: Harwony. | E
NL. U. QUSRTEDTE, E
perann cimacre
DHRAATH,
“Ought the American ‘women to be granted
ie the right of suffrage?”
ADP LO MATIV ES.
WILLIS Ds GHAVES, tLe U,
BEVERLY AC BMITH, NM, Le U,
jew York city,
BYRON M. CHILD, N. 1. Us, Jattoraun Co,”
|
ij
{
SEGA TEV, |
‘M. De F. PUTNEY; t, of N,, Suffolk, Ga, |
oo ee al
MYRON G PLOUGH, 1, ©, of Ny Daluware Co:
Most of the students were of modest means, and the free tuition and
texts were certainly important considerations in their coming to Albany,
but they still had to provide travel and living costs, One alumna later
recalled that most lived on the scantiest means. For a number of years
the School subsidized both travel and living costs; in 1845 such
payments represented about 23 percent of the School’s budget. But
such subsidies were financially too burdensome and were soon abandoned,
There were, of course, no dormitories. New students were urged to
report to the Normal School building “where they will be directed to
boarding houses approved by the faculty,” and an early student recalled
that “careful attention was bestowed upon the location of the strangers
36
in suitable homes during their residence in the city.” Costs were
regularly reported in the School's annual “circular.” In the 1850s the
price of board “in respectable families” varied from $1.75 to $2.50
per week “exclusive of washing,” but the price rose inexorably to
$3.50 and $4.00 per week during the Civil War and later. Some,
particularly male students, reduced costs by boarding themselves in a
room that cost as little as $1.00 per week in the 1880s; it was a kind
of 19th Century version of apartment living. Students from nearby
communities were able to reduce their costs by living at home, doubtless
a factor in the relatively large number of students from Albany and
Rensselaer counties.
The Normal School stood in loco parentis (in the place of parents) to
its students and supervised their lives in various ways. Students were
segregated by sex and supervised in the classrooms. Men and women
were not allowed to board in the same families, and “gentlemen of the
school” were not permitted to call upon “ladies of the school” after
6:00 p.m, The School's circular of 1851 assured its readers that “Particular
care is taken to be assured of the respectability of the families who
propose to take boarders, before they are recommended to the pupils.”
The School asked householders to keep no boarders or roomers other
than Normal students, to schedule meals in such a way that students
could keep to a schedule that occupied their time twenty-four hours a
day, and to report immediately any student misconduct or violation of
the rules. “Failure to comply with these requests will be regarded as
sufficient ground for removing students,” the School warned.
Students were expected to maintain standards of behavior becoming
a future teacher, and the School disciplined students when necessary.
Principal Perkins reported in 1852 that six students had been expelled
for offenses ranging from noisy and indecorous conduct to theft and
passing a counterfeit coin. But such examples of formal discipline were
few. Student conduct was more probably regulated by the expectations
of the communities in which they. were to teach and by the pervasive
religiosity of the day.
We know little of “student culture” in the 19th Century. There was
obviously some social life, for a good many students found a spouse
within the student body. Some students kept autograph books, particularly
Autograph books and photograph albums
were the 19th Century equivalent of year
books. Top to bottom: unidentified autograph
book 1860.61; photo album of Mima Williams
Diefendorf, "78; Friendship Tablet of Isabella
G. Rawson, °57; George R. Burton autograph
book, 1860. (Photo by Mark Schmidt.)
37
A letter from women faculty praising President
Alden for paying women “for the work done
and not to the sex of the worker.” Women
faculty included: Mary McClellan, °68, teacher
of English grammar and history (opposite page,
left); Mary F, Hyde, ’69, teacher of arithmetic,
geometry and rhetoric (opposite page, right).
(Letter from Office of the President's Records.)
in the 1860s and 1870s. The printed volumes contained the sentimental
etchings and poetry characteristic of Victorian American culture. Some
included photographs of the signatories, both faculty and students, and
occasionally a student noted in his or her book the later careers of
classmates, Mina Williams, ’74, observed of a Normal School friend
that she had “met many who can truly say that they have been made
better for your having lived. . .”
Student societies made their appearance in the 1870s. One alumnus
recalled that in that decade the Normal Literary Union and the
Independent Order of Normals were strong rival societies while the
Philomathean Society was flourishing among the women. By the early
1890s the Independent Order of Normals and the Philomatheans had
been joined by Phi Delta and Delta Omega and a surge of Greek life
was about to begin,
Mordaunt Green in his 1848 valedictory address correctly asserted
that the School had absorbed the entire energies and attention of the
students who “became, as it were, a Normal
community.” But that student community was
very different from student cultures in 19th
Century American four-year colleges. Normal
School students in both their origins and
aepitations were thrremowed from thewocally
elite students attending liberal arts colleges,
They shared their educational experience for
two years rather than four; many attended the
school for even briefer periods. They focused
their energies on a highly structured professional
curriculum far different from 19th Century liberal
arts colleges.
The end of the Normal School era was
marked by two events: the occupation of a new
building in 1885 and the celebration of the
institution's Semi-Centennial in 1894. The
pressures of enrollment and the deficiencies of
the old building necessitated a new home for
38
|
the School. A delegation from the Senate Finance Committee concluded
in 1883 that the Lodge Street building was not worth remodeling and
should instead be sold. In the same year the Legislature appropriated
$143,000 for a new building, a structure which ended up costing nearly
$200,000.
The new Willett Street building was the largest and most carefully
planned facility the Normal School had yet had. It included space for
chemistry and physics laboratories, an assembly hall that could seat
over 600, and living quarters for the President. In subsequent years an
adjoining building was purchased and modified, an electrical system
was installed, and other smaller modifications were made. Equally
important, the building stood opposite Albany's Washington Park; for
the first time students had open spaces which they could use as a
“campus.”
The symbolic center of the new structure was a large stained glass
“Alumni Memorial Window” installed at the end of 1892. It measured
over thirty-two by fourteen feet, making it the largest such window in
the United States at the time.
39
An association of graduates of the Normal School had
been organized in 1849, and biennial “jubilees” had
been held between 1851 and 1872 except during the
Civil War years. President Waterbury revived the
organization with a reunion in 1883 attended by 600
graduates; the gathering planned the window and began
raising money. In the end, 1,418 alumni(ae) contributed
sums ranging from 50 cents to $50 each to fund the
project. It was a touching and impressive memorial both
to the loyalty of the alumni(ae) and to the ideals of the
Normal School.
The Semi-Centennial Jubilee of 1894 was a gala series
of events attended by over a thousand people. The banquet
filled the two largest dining rooms in the city. Some 610
out of 3,300 living alumni were present. The Historical
Sketch of the State Normal College at Albany... and a
History of Its Graduates for Fifty Years... , published in
connection with the Jubilee, emphasized the achievements
of the School's graduates and spoke to the success of the
Normal School experiment begun a half century earlier.
By the late 19th Century the Albany State Normal
School had clearly fulfilled its mission of training teachers
for the common schools. A succession of State
Superintendents praised the institution and its graduates;
Andrew Sloan Draper summed it up in 1891 when he
asserted that “it cannot be doubted that [Albany's graduates]
make the best teachers to be found in the public schools.”
In the 1880s President Waterbury began collecting
information about Albany's graduates. The Historical Sketch
published in 1895 contained over 300 pages of biographical
information on those who graduated between 1845 and
1895. The volume demonstrated decisively that the
overwhelming majority of graduates had taught, many
had very long teaching careers and many had held
distinguished positions in American education.
The Normal School could look back on its first half.
}
The Class of 1888 in front of the new building
on Willett Street. Below: The Willett Street
building of the Normal School, occupied in
1885. The famous Alumni Window is located
at the extreme left. The main entrance is in the
iniddle of the Willett Street side. The building
included a residence for the President.
41
42
century years with pride, But the winds of change were blowing through
American education and were to alter the institution in significant ways
in the next two decades,
(Above) Edward P. Waterbury, President from
1882 to 1889.
(Right) Jenny Wornham Wickham, '86,
taught for eight years before marrying
R. Woodley Wickham, a Normal School
graduate, moving to Poughkeepsie, and
raising her two children. She died in 1966
at age ninety-eight, Women’s teaching
careers were generally ended by marriage
until the mid 20th Century.
(Opposite) The chapel/assembly hall in the
Willett Street building with the Alumni Mem-
orial Window in the rear. The stained glass win-
dow was the largest in the country in 1890. The first
recorded Alumni fundraising drive paid the $5,000 cost,
43
