- City:
- Westfield, NJ
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Schools
- New Deal Agencies:
- Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
- Marked:
- Yes
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
“This school made possible the abandonment of four dilapidated portable buildings which were being used for classes due to the extreme overcrowding of the two existing elementary schools.
The project and its equipment are planned for a future addition which will increase the present capacity of 510 students by more than 30 percent. The building as built is 2 stories high in the central part and has a 1-sotry wing at each end. It contains 13 classrooms, a kindergarten, offices, service rooms, teachers’ room with a kitchen attached, a clinic, and a combined auditorium-gymnasium for use by the pupils and by the community.
The construction is fireproof. Exterior walls are red brick with white marble and wood trim and the roof is grey tile. The reinforced concrete floor slabs are in general covered with linoleum. The boilers are of sufficient capacity to care for the future increase of the building. There is a unit system of ventilation with thermostatic control, an electric time system, and wiring for radio. The structure has a ground floor area of 10,518 square feet, a volume of 642,192 cubic feet, and was completed in August 1935 at a construction cost of $252,780 and a project cost of $275,464.”
Source notes
C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown. "Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration." (1939).
Site originally submitted by The Living New Deal on December 17, 2011.
Additional contributions by Bob Hespe.
Site Details
| Total Cost |
|---|
| $275,464.00 |
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Jerru
Jeffrey A. Ryan
Pamela Robbins
I attended 5th and 6th grades here in 1976. I can also state the school is still open and has students today in 2022. I still live in town and know fsmili who are currently in Wilson!
I grew up on the corner of Kimball Avenue and Canterbury Road. I went to Wilson School from Kindergarten to 5th Grade. I contracted Polio in August of 1952 when I was 9, and I was a patient at The Childrens’ Country Home until that December. I had the second half of 6th Grade and 7th at Elm Street. Then Roosevelt and then Westfield High. At Wilson I walked home for lunch. I remember air raid drills when the teacher would yell FLASH!! – and we all dive under our desks. As if we would then be safe from nuclear bombs.
I, too, attended Wilson from Grades K – 5. I remember the “flash” and air raid drills quite clearly. Perhaps they were held to give everyone a feeling of “doing something” in case of an attack – but all those drills gave us was a lot of angst! I remember crying my eyes out in kindergarten because the Russians (I believed) were about to bomb us. Did not grasp that it was only a drill. Kind of silly to put everyone through all that, for if there’d been a real bombing, we’d have been toast.