The very first school in the Massapequa area was built almost 200 years ago, in 1820. It stood in the woods between Massapequa Lake and Old Grace Church, neither of which existed at that time. It was a one room wooden building that accommodated 15 students, who were likely children of the servants who worked in the Jones and Floyd-Jones estates that dotted the area. It burned down in 1850 and was replaced by another building of the same size and construction. Enrollment remained small until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when population growth in the area brought the number to 30 in 1902. Fueling the growth was the development of the farming district in North Massapequa as well as the settlement of what became Massapequa Park by German immigrants.
To accommodate this growth, the school was moved to today's Park Boulevard and a second room was added. There was good reason to move the school because the children had become interested in the horse races conducted at a track just west of the school, behind Massapequa Manor, which bordered Massapequa Lake. Park Boulevard, then called Wurttenberg Road and, later, informally Schoolhouse Road was sufficiently far from the racetrack to eliminate that distraction.
Enrollment had shot up to 55 by 1910, a clear sign of the area's development. The two classrooms could accommodate the students, but the building was by no means modern. There was no indoor plumbing, so children used outhouses. Water was pumped from wells in each classroom, and the stoves were fed with wood and coal in cold weather. In addition, boys could bring their guns to school and keep them in a small room by the door, available for sport or for shooting supper after school. That description should underscore how different the Massapequas were a century ago.
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My next blog will describe the creation of the area's first modern school.
