Perhaps you are here because you are already familiar with Skinner Organs, but not familiar with Columbia High School. The building seen today was constructed in 1927 on Parker Avenue in Maplewood, New Jersey but the institutional history goes back far further. South Orange and Maplewood were once a single town, but a split in the early 1920's resulted in a single school district for two towns. Although a school existed on the Columbia Turnpike (now South Orange Avenue) at the time of the revolutionary war, the first mention of a school called Columbia was as early as 1814. Columbia School existed in what is now South Orange serving all grades of students from what were then a single town on a tuition basis, which ended in the mid 1800's. In 1885 Columbia School was renamed Columbia High School and began to serve just the upper grades. With the huge growth in both South Orange and Maplewood a massive school building campaign was capped off with the construction of the core of Columbia's current home on the Maplewood side in 1927.

Including those early tuition years CHS has always been a public school, the structure resembles more of a college or private school. When the original part of the school was built in 1927, the architect noted that the resources of a community were far greater than the resources of a private school, and that the result should be a superior school. It was also pointed out, at the time, that the wealthy residents could easily afford private schools and to compete the public schools would have to be of an exceptional caliber. In that aim, it is easily demonstrable that the best of everything was used in its construction. The architectural firm, Guilbert and Betelle, were considered to be the foremost designers of schools even to the point of making the pages of Time Magazine in 1931. Years earlier, when Pierre S DuPont decided to replace nearly every single school in Delaware, he selected Guilbert & Betelle as sole architects. Columbia High School, Guilbert and Betelle's most expensive single school ever built, was written about in many architectural and educational periodicals at that time. Even the 1929 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica described the school and pictured its floorplan as an example of what a high school should be. The attention came as no surprise because Columbia was beautifully built and lavishly equipped. There is a six story clock tower with an observatory, fitted with a Brashear telescope. The swimming pool has a Catalan arch ceiling by Rafael Guastavino. The foyer and halls have a tile installation by Hermann Carl Mueller. These names mean as much to people interested in telescopes, engineering, and ceramic tile as the name E.M. Skinner means to an organ enthusiast.

Fast forward eighty-something years, and the South Orange Maplewood school district has changed quite a bit for the no-expense spared day leading up to the Great Depression. While on the face of things the two towns appear quite affluent, one in five students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Minorities make up more than half of the student body. Yet, remarkably for a public school, the school still sends dozens of students to Ivy League universities each year… and two Rhodes Scholars in the past five years. Among the graduates in recent years are famous names like Zach Braff who stars in the NBC Television show “Scrubs”, or eight-time Grammy award winner Lauryn Hill, or four-time Olympic runner Joetta Clark, or Academy Award winner Elisabeth Shue… to be honest that’s just scratching the surface. The list of notable and successful graduates is unusually long. Oddly however, for a public school with a long track record of talented alumni, and one which has a Skinner organ, there is not a single world class organist on the list (but there is one world class marimba artist!) Columbia's Notable Alumni

Links

Blog on Columbia Architect James Oscar Betelle

Wikipedia Entry on Columbia High School