History of Mifflin School, by Erin Lehman
In 2024, Erin Lehman wrote a two-part history of Thomas Mifflin School, published in East Falls NOW. The articles are reproduced here with her permission:
“Mifflin from 1936 to now: ‘A beacon of light in our community,‘” and
“Thomas Mifflin School Grows: It started with a parade from IQL“
Mifflin from 1936 to now: ‘A beacon of light in our community
East Falls NOW November 2024, by Erin Lehman
On a dreary day in October, 1936, Dr. Israel Galter, then principal of the Samuel Breck School and soon to be Thomas Mifflin School’s first principal, presided at the corner-laying ceremony, where several hundred Fallsers were entertained by the P.W.A. band. Reverend William J. Hayes, pastor of the Falls of Schuylkill Baptist Church intoned “We are drawn hither today to share in the erection of this temple of learning…May it indeed be a beacon light in the community, dispelling the darkness of ignorance, enlightening the mind, that children may walk in ways of understanding and bless our country with a citizenship that shall walk in the glad freedom of the truth.” The flag was raised, speeches were given, and the Star Spangled Banner sung. Mrs. Alma Winkler of the East Fall-Queen Lane Manor School Association noted that within the cornerstone of Mifflin School (and presumably still resting there today) was a bible, a flag, and various newspapers articles reporting on the new school.
Mifflin was constructed as a replacement for the Thomas Breck School, then located on Indian Queen Lane. Like the City as a whole, the population of East Falls grew in the early part of the 20th century. Public schools played an important role as anchor institutions within neighborhoods beyond the academic instruction of children. In 1911, then Board of Education District President Henry R. Edmunds noted, “Today, a multitude of interests are being cared for by the public school system…there is a growing tendency for the community to regard the school as the center of much of its social life.” The early decades of the 20th century saw the construction of dozens of new schools in the city, including Mifflin.
In East Falls, the new school was so named, at least in part, because it was located on the former estate of Thomas Mifflin (1744-1800), a Philadelphia merchant and Founding Father. Mifflin served in the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, and later as a delegate to the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787. In1790 he was elected the first governor of the state of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 1799. The Pennsylvania Constitution, written during his tenure, had the foresight to direct the Legislature to establish free schools throughout the state. His home was located by the Schuylkill River, east of the current intersection of Midvale and Ridge Aves. Up until the Civil War era, the Midvale section of East Falls was referred to as “Mifflin’s Hollow.”
At the time of its founding, the land occupied by the school had been the homestead of Patrick H. Kelly, a prominent contractor and brother to Jack Kelly (and uncle of the actress/Princess Grace Kelly). In 1927, members of the East Falls Business Men’s Association, the East Falls Mothers’ Club, and the Breck Home and School Association, agreed that a new school was in order for the growing population of East Falls. They formed the East Falls-Queen Lane Manor School Association, which carried out negotiations with the Philadelphia Board of Education.
Although the new school was initially held back by the Great Depression, by 1934 New Deal funds geared towards education became available, and approval and funding became the special project of Jack Kelly. When ground was broken for the new building in the spring of 1936 at the corner of Conrad street and Midvale avenue, a sign at the construction site identified it as “Public Works Administration Project No. PA-1067.” The contract for the school was awarded to John McShain, Inc. for the sum of $621,740. McShain’s company also built the Jefferson Memorial and the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC, among many other notable buildings. Impressively, the project only ran about four thousand over, and combined with $20,000 for furniture and equipment and $31, 787.25 for the land, the total cost came in at $677,207.75 divided between the School District and a Federal Government Grant.
Late in February 1937, Breck School staff moved textbooks, supplies, and their personal belongings to the new building. According to a March 2, 1937 article in The Suburban Press, under the watchful eye of Dr. Galter, potted palms were moved into the atrium, goldfish bowls and polished new globes placed on sills, and pictures and schedules attached to the walls. The new Mifflin School boasted some innovations in the classroom as well, including desks that had attached chairs but could be moved around the classroom at will, and large blackboards that open to reveal cloakrooms. And while the desks are long gone, those chalkboard closets still remain in some of the classrooms today! The handsome new school opened for classes on March 1, 1937 with an enrollment of approximately 750 pupils (for reference 362 students currently attend the school). That same day, The Evening Bulletin newspaper noted that the school was literally built on a solid foundation, the builders having excavated thousands of tons of rock from the area. Over the next thirty years, the school grew on that foundation, to be explored in the next issue.
Thomas Mifflin School Grows: It started with a parade from IQL
East Falls NOW December 2024, by Erin Lehman
When the Thomas Mifflin School opened in 1937, following that ceremonial pupil and staff march from the old Breck School, it was into the large, architecturally impressive, fireproof stone structure we know today. There were twenty designated classrooms, as well as specially designed spaces for industrial arts, home economics, kindergarten, and something called an “adjustment room.” The abundant play space was also noted, as it then included the wooden areas along Midvale Ave. and Conrad St. That first year, a contest was held to determine school colors. The original winners—maroon and grey—are not far off from the current maroon and white of today’s Mifflin Mustangs. The opening ceremonies were held on the porch on the Midvale side. Approximately 750 students were enrolled that first year, and the designers imagined it had enough space for 1000 pupils.
In the early decades of the Mifflin School, East Falls was a self-contained community. Its many shops, restaurants, and bars, a swimming pool, two movie theaters, and a wide range of religious, civic, and entertainment organizations kept residents busy within the confines of the neighborhood.
As it does now, the school served as one of those anchor points, and helped connect resident children with the goings on around it. When, for example, one of the nearby churches began holding dances for students on Friday nights, the school took it upon themselves to teach their students proper dance etiquette—”boy invites girl, boy brings girl a corsage, boy escorts girl to event, invites girl to dance, gets refreshments.” Bob’s, a penny candy store at the corner of Conrad and Penn Streets, served the children of Mifflin, as did the Alden Theater on Midvale. Following Saturday morning matinees, students would race across Midvale to play in the Mifflin rock gardens adjacent to the school.
And there were a lot of children, both in the neighborhood and the school. Some neighborhood kids attended St. Bridget’s School, farther down on Midvale, but at its height in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the school enrolled approximately 900 children, pulled primarily from around the school and the Abbottsford Homes at the northern end of the neighborhood. Through the 1960s, the school held two eighth grade graduations each year, in December and June, celebrating between forty and sixty students at each graduation ceremony.
Looking back in 1957, then Principal Dr. Israel Galter (1896-1987), who had initially been principal at the Breck School, was proud that Mifflin had thus far proven worthy of the neighborhood’s initial investment, noting proudly that “in the twenty years of Mifflin’s existence, several thousand pupils have passed through its portals on their way to maturity and useful citizenship.” According to oral histories collected by the East Falls Historical Association, alumni from mid-century often fondly remembered specific teachers, including an oft mentioned teacher named Mrs. Devita, whose second graders all remember learning the verses to Adeste Fideles in Latin, and a music teacher, Mrs. Sypher, who would lead the children in rounds of singing at assemblies, often in four part harmony! According to a 2005 oral history with alum Ruth Camburn, in addition to the three R’s, “they had a woodshop for the boys and they had a cooking shop for the girls. And then they had a sewing room for the girls… we had to make our uniforms to go into the cooking, like aprons and all.”
By the early 1960s, despite not quite reaching the imagined student capacity, Mifflin School was bursting at the seams. In 1961, enrollment hovered at just over 900 children. By comparison, today 362 K-8 pupils attend the school, and last year Mifflin graduated one eighth grade of approximately 30 total students. In the original plans for the school, seventh and eighth graders were included only on a temporary basis. Plans to move them to a junior high school never materialized, and by mid-century, their numbers had only grown. And Mifflin was not alone—overcrowding at Roxborough High School necessitated the sharing of home economics and industrial arts classes throughout the area, with students from Dobson, Wissahickon, Levering, and Cook visiting Mifflin for those classes. The mechanical drawing teacher had to float between those schools as there was no room in the building, and sewing classes were being held in a small conference room and an adjacent hallway.
Overcrowding in the kindergarten classroom necessitated an off-site makeshift classroom be created at the Abbottsford Homes. There were approximately forty students in each of the regular classrooms, five over square footage capacity for the building and four more than the general capacity standard for city schools at the time. The lunch space was a particular problem—whereas most children in the 1930s had gone home for lunch each day, and so space had only been provided for about 100 kids to eat, by the early 1960s, almost half the students stayed at school for lunch.
In February of 1961, Principal Galter proposed an addition to the school. The plan, a collaborative effort of the East Falls Community Council, the Home and School Association, and Mifflin Staff, was to include the following: a dedicated home ec room, two additional kindergartens, a science laboratory, a room each for mechanical drawing and art, boys and girls locker rooms for gym, a greatly expanded lunchroom and an additional academic classroom to ease the overcrowding. The kindergarten rooms were to be larger than normal to accommodate daily nap time and the storage of large toys. Anticipating even greater student enrollment in the years to come, Principal Galter proposed additional spaces for these activities, as well as purchasing six houses along Conrad St in order to enlarge the outdoor play spaces.
Although Dr. Galter retired in 1963, plans for the addition went forward, and the new spaces were dedicated in 1967 under his successor, Samuel Rudolph. Neighborhood organizations, especially the East Falls Community Council, along with parents and school staff, were instrumental in persuading the Board of Public Education to approve the addition. However, while the original plan called for the equivalent of fifteen new units, the new annex added only six additional classrooms as well as more bathrooms and a stairwell. Work on the addition began in June 1965 and students and staff occupied the space on September 8, 1966.
In the program for the dedication ceremonies, held March 28, 1967, W. Clark Hanna, President of the East Falls Community Council noted, “The East Falls Community Council, its predecessor, the East Falls Committee on Community Planning, and, in fact, the people of all East Falls in general have always regarded the Thomas Mifflin School as one of their favorite and most important institutions.” Following the Invocation, the dedicatory address and a few musical selections, the Mifflin School Song was sung by the audience: “Hail Thomas Mifflin! Childhood’s pure shrine! We offer homage in anthem’s divine; Heart joined to heart, our song we raise; Give thee worthy praise—Alma Mater. Guide thou our paths! Reveal the true light! Dispel the gloom of error’s night! May thy bright flame gleam ever strong. Learning’s great power prolong—Alma Mater.”
