Blake School - Reflections / Call O Pan Yearbook (Hopkins, MN)

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50 YEARS OF THE BLAKE SCHOOL A Pictorial History “There is nothing that solidifies and strengthens an institution like reading that institution’s history, whether that history is recorded in books or embodied in customs.” Unknown

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FIRST TRUSTEES OUTLINE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL Top: School at Ridgewood Avenue Above: 1803 Hennepin Avenue, site of second school MR. NEWTON, headmaster. MR. BI.AKE. founder of The Blake School MR. JOHNSON, third headmaster Junior School at Colfax Avenue (through 1939) (Editors’ Note) This being Blake’s 50th Anniversary, it is only proper that the half century of Blake's existence should Ik- reviewed. We will take from Blake what we will . . . perhaps these pictorial anil verbal impressions may cast some new lights on 50 years of Blake, and may give a sense of the way things have changed, and not changed, in both the distant and immediate past. Our impressions are. in the large part, formed by these various buildings and teachers which mold, to a great extent, our lives at Blake, and which arc often neglected in the weekday round of classes, athletics, and social activities. Eugene C. Alder, a former headmaster, and Benjamin S. Woodworth, class of 1917, have written their own early histories of Blake. The editors felt both Mr. Alder and Mr. Woodworth should have their histories presented as the basic part of the over-all history because of their different impressions and recollections. The following is a combination of both histories written by two old friends of Blake who died within a month of each other in early 1955: “Blake School was founded in 1907 by Mr. William McKcndree Blake, a graduate of De Pauw University of the class of 1873. After his graduation from college, Mr. Blake was successively a teacher, a principal, and superintendent of the public schools of Indiana for about thirty years. He then came to Minneapolis and started a school for boys of which he was principal for four years. “This school, which opened for students on September 20, 1907. was situated at 200 Ridgewood Avenue. In four years it grew from an enrolment of twenty-five boys with three teachers to seventy-five with six teachers. During that period, having outgrown the first quarters, it was removed to 1803 Hennepin Avenue in January 1911.