4-10-2024 12:51am

April 10, 1909: History Recounted of the Lincoln and Washington Schools

Lesley Misko Editor

April 10, 1909: Scholastic rivalry was created when the Boyertown School Board decided to build its new school “above the railroad.” In an election today, the voters overwhelmingly agreed to purchase the property next to Mt. Pleasant Seminary on West Philadelphia Avenue for a second schoolhouse in town.

The preference of the school board was to place the new school next to the existing building at Third and Washington Streets, but a “monster” petition of more than 300 signatures cannot be ignored. The signers argued that the school should be built west of the railroad tracks because it is dangerous for pupils in the lower grades to have to cross the tracks several times a day if it could be avoided. They cited an accident several years ago when a child lost a leg on the tracks.

Like the Washington School, the new school is two stories high with eight rooms. It was named the Lincoln School, but was more commonly called “stinkin’ Lincoln east of the tracks by the “downtown” students.

Originally, both schools housed students in grades one through six, but all Boyertown students I grades seven and eight attended Lincoln and nine through twelve attended Washington School.

When the Boyertown High School was opened in 1921, both Washington and Lincoln became strictly elementary schools and were closed when Boyertown Elementary School was opened in 1970. Washington School was then razed and the Boyertown Borough Hall was built on the property and Lincoln School was converted to an office building.