While it was the construction of train lines that first drew people to Pelham as a newly-created suburban community, once here, it took schools to get them to stay, and for others to follow.

History of Pelham's Schools

New York State had long mandated that towns fund public education, yet there were no requirements in the 19th century as to the quality or extent of the schooling. Those who first ventured into this new concept of suburban living found in Pelham only a single, one-room public schoolhouse -- the “Prospect Hill School” -- then located on present day Split Rock Road. Heated by a stove in the center of the room, early pupils would later report that those seated near the stove would roast, while those seated furthest away would freeze.

The building on Shore Road built in 1843 as a community parochial school by Rev. Robert Bolton. Photo from Pelham Town Historian “Montgomery Slide” Collection (Digitized No. 7-34) 

The distance to either school was too far and the capacity too limited for the residents of the new “Pelhamville” neighborhood established in 1851 at the north end of town.  To address this problem, in 1861 the property owner’s association deeded a piece of the “Pelham Square” (which served as a town square in the middle of the neighborhood) for the construction of a new two-room school house at the corner of Third and Lincoln Avenue.   Over the next 160 years, four subsequent elementary school buildings were built in this location (each of which had multiple expansions), culminating in the recent construction of the latest “Hutchinson Elementary School.”

The old "Jackson Avenue School" once located at the corner of Jackson and Plymouth Avenuens

Beyond elementary school, Pelham educational opportunities were even more limited.  The Boltons (in addition to the parochial elementary school) operated a boarding school for young ladies at their “Pelham Priory” mansion.  However, the school was small and extremely selective, drawing pupils from other parts of the country, particularly the southeast.   It closed in 1882, just about the time that the developers of Pelham Manor, Silas H. Witherbee and his daughter Mary Black, were trying to attract new residents. They offered two of their houses to persuade a teacher from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, Emily Hazen, to open a new school that was named “Pelham Hall,” but was more generally known as “Mrs. Hazen’s School for Girls.”  (The two houses still stand at 952 and 964 Pelhamdale and retain much of their original architectural integrity.)  

View from the Esplanade of the campus of “Pelham Hall” aka “Mrs. Hazen’s School for Girls” Photo from Pelham Town Historian “Montgomery Slide” Collection (Digitized No. 4-058) 

Pelham parents who wanted a high school education for their boys, either had them tutored privately at home or sent them to boarding school. But in 1880, Mrs. Black hired Horace Taft as a boys' teacher, setting him up in the same houses where Mrs. Hazen began.  The first incoming class consisted of 17 boys, including Mrs. Black’s two sons.  Unfortunately, the more than 70 girls at Mrs. Hazen’s School proved too much of a distraction and too tempting a target of practical jokes for Mr. Taft’s boys and the school was moved in 1893 to Watertown, Connecticut.  (More about the history of the Taft School)

The “North Pelham School” built in 1888 with Principal Isaac Hill and two teachers. Photo from the Pelham Town Historian “Montgomery Slide” Collection (Digitized no. 7-23) 

The North Pelham School was too small almost from its start; another classroom was added in 1894 and two more in 1897.  In 1900, a second floor was added to the North Pelham School, and the building was expanded again in 1910.  

The North Pelham School after the 1910 expansion  Photo: From the Town Historian “Montgomery Slide” Collection (Digitized no. 7-26)

Meanwhile, Pelham Heights was clamoring for a proper school building instead of the house that had been loaned for the purpose; in 1900, the “Highbrook Avenue School” was built (on the same location as the current Colonial Elementary School). 

The Pelham High School & Hutchinson Elementary School as it appeared after its completion.  Photo from the Pelham Town Historian Collection;  Photos; Siwanoy

Plans for this school began with a special taxpayer meeting on November 13, 1908 to vote on a proposition to purchase a site. According to news reports from the time: "At that meeting the present site was decided upon and the Board of Education was instructed [by the taxpayers] to purchase the same and to issue $70,000 in bonds" for land to construct the new school. York & Sawyer, a firm well-known for major college building commissions, were retained as the architects and the construction contract was awarded to Smith Brothers (a local firm that also built many of Pelham's landmarks, streets and infrastructure).  The cornerstone was laid October 23, 1909.  In addition to high school classes on the top floor for the whole town, the building consolidated the Jackson Avenue and Highbrook Avenue Grammar Schools.

The Siwanoy School was barely completed before the outstanding reputation of the new school and Pelham’s rapid development resulted in such significant enrollment increases that the building became too small. The Highbrook Avenue School was not only re-opened to serve the Heights, but a house at 105 Boulevard was used as an annex.   In less than a decade, there were over 100 students enrolled in the high school, studying alongside children in the lower grades in a building that was less than one-third the size of the current building.

A committee was formed in 1917 "to take up the problem of making provision for the ever-growing needs for increasing the educational facilities of the district."  After a competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, the New York City architectural firm of Tooker & Marsh was selected for its design of a “Collegiate Gothic” style building that was unrivaled in all of Westchester County.  With the end of World War I, the whole town turned out to celebrate the laying of the cornerstone on October 18, 1919 for "Pelham Memorial High School," named in dedication to those who fought and died in "the Great War."  Due to post-war difficulties in sourcing steel and other materials, it took two years before the building was sufficiently finished for the school to open for the start of the 1921 school year. 

The proposed Colonial Elementary School as shown in a 1924 promotional brochure advocating for the passing of a bond to acquire land and build the school.  Photo from Pelham Town Historian Collection; Oversized Files; Schools.

The 1924 PMHS extension added a wing across the back facing Wolfs Lane. But by the opening of the school year in 1925, the school was so crowded that it went to a split session with high school students attending early in the morning and the junior high students in the afternoon. 

With the failure to pass a bond for a new Colonial School, the Highbrook Avenue School remained crowded;  it was too small almost from the day it opened in 1910 with just four classrooms.  By 1924, it could only house first and second grades, with the upper classes going to Siwanoy.  It would take two more years of bond proposals before a new Colonial School was approved. B ut attempts continued to fail to get approval for more land and, in 1926, the cornerstone was laid for a new school on the same site as the old one.

With the PMHS student population on the verge of doubling from 1924 to 1930, two more bond proposals were put to the voters in 1928: $600,000 for a huge expansion of PMHS and $400,000 for a new school at the south end of Pelham Manor. Both passed. Pelham Memorial High School received a new large gymnasium, a “projection auditorium” (now “Alumni Hall”), 12 classrooms, the library, a music room, an art room, and a string of new classrooms.

On June 9, 1929, the cornerstone was laid for a new “Prospect Hill School,” reinstating the name of the very first, one-room school house in Pelham Manor built on Split Rock Road nearly a century earlier in 1835.