Students, faculty and alumni will celebrate the 100-year anniversary from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday with activities that explore the school's past. Mayor David Narkewicz and Northampton Superintendent of Schools John Provost will speak at the event that will feature games, student-led tours and historical displays.
NORTHAMPTON -- In 1915, Babe Ruth hit his first career home run. The first stop sign in America appeared on the streets of Detroit. The U.S. House of Representatives voted down a proposal to give women the right to vote.
And in Northampton, Massachusetts, The Bridge Street School opened its doors.
Students, faculty and alumni will celebrate the 100-year anniversary from 3-5 p.m. on Friday with activities that explore the school's past. Mayor David Narkewicz and Northampton Superintendent of Schools John Provost will speak at the event that will feature games, student-led tours and historical displays.
Bridge Street's Kindergarten through fifth-graders have spent the past few months learning what life was like in 1915, according to Principal Beth Choquette. Each grade level was responsible for a topic: First grade learned about education a century ago; second grade, food; third grade studied clothing, and so on. Fifth graders found out what Northampton was like as a city way back when.
The school first opened in a building at the end of Union Street in the late 1800s, but closed in 1906. Classes started in the new school in March 2015.
"It's important for kids to understand and know their community; how things have changed, where they come from," Choquette said of anniversary festivities. "For them, their community is school."
The students' hard work will be incorporated into an exhibit that will run through the summer at the Historic Northampton Museum on Bridge Street. Food tins, typewriters and telephones, garments and dish-ware will be among the 1910s-era items displayed.
Nancy Rexford, acting director of Historic Northampton, said the year Bridge Street School opened was a time of great change for the world. There was the transition from trollies to automobiles, from handwork to powered devices such as vacuums and washing machines. And more and more people were graduating from high school.
"We'll definitely be highlighting those changes," said Rexford, who has been poring over and pulling from Montgomery Ward catalogues published in 1915.
This spring, Choquette created a 100-year anniversary committee that was tasked with collecting memorabilia from Bridge Street graduates. Through alumni, students have been able to see what their elementary school predecessors looked like as far back as the 1920s.
The committee has also located what it believes is the school's oldest living alumna: Helen Krok Backiel, who will turn 100 in June. The soon-to-be centenarian will travel from her home in Ware with her brother to attend the celebration Friday.
"It's about that sense of belonging," Choquette said, commenting on the significance of the anniversary to current and former Bridge Street students. "It's like being part of a family."