Timeline & Notable Graduates

1900

The Wider World

• The Kodak Brownie
  1900, Kodak introduces and successfully mass markets $1 Brownie cameras and film processing services.
• New York City is the world's second-largest (after London); the Lower East Side is the most densely inhabited place in the world.

1901/1902

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Centralized management by the NYC Board of Education under a single Superintendent of Schools is established.

The Wider World

The IBM Keypunch

• Sep. 6, 1901, President McKinley is mortally wounded.
• Sep. 14, 1901, McKinley dies, Vice-president Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
• The keypunch appears and changes little for over 50 years.

1902/1903

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Jan. 1, 1903, The NY Times reports that a manual training high school in Manhattan will be one of the next school construction projects.

The Wider World

• The Ford Model A, AKA “Fordmobile”
  July 23, 1903, First Ford Model A (aka Fordmobile) sold

1903/1904

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• April 1904, Board of Education's Committee on Building approves plans for a school, to be named Stuyvesant High School, for a location between Livingston Place and First Avenue.
• Dewitt Clinton High School will be transferred out of the former Public School 47 building (1865), at 225 East 23rd Street, and the building remodeled for temporary use as Stuyvesant HS.

The Wider World

The Wright Brothers' Flyer

• Dec. 17, 1903, Wright Brothers first flight.
• June 15, 1904 1,000 people die on an annual outing of an Evangelical German Lutheran Church when fire erupts aboard the steamboat General Slocum in the East River, the worst catastrophe in NYC until Sep. 11, 2004.
• June 16, 1904, James Joyce's Ulysses takes place on this day.
• 1904, John A. Fleming patents the diode vacuum tube.
• John Fleming's diode vacuum tube
  1904 Number One Song: "Come Take a Trip on My Airship"

1904/1905

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• On Sep.12 1904, Stuyvesant High School opens its doors to 155 male students and 12 male faculty at its temporary site, 225 E 23rd St.
• Dr. Frank Rollins, Stuy's first principal
  Dr. Frank Rollins is the first principal. The school opens as a manual training school, offering students the opportunity to combine technical training with academic coursework. Soon, a literary society is founded.
• Football, Basketball, Rifle and Tennis Teams are instituted under the aegis of the Athletic Association.
• During the year the school almost doubles in enrollment and 9 teachers are added.
• The SHS Mathematical Society is founded.
• The first exhibition of shop work is held.
• The Glee Club and Dramatic Society are established.
• The first Indicator, the annual yearbook, is published, for "both instruction and entertainment."

The Wider World

• Oct. 27, 1904, New York City IRT subway opens, to a slogan, "From City Hall to Harlem in 15 Minutes!"
• The construction of the Panama Canal
  Theodore Roosevelt's Panama Canal Commission restructures the canal effort to solve political, engineering and human problems; work resumes.
• Jan. 2, 1905, Russia surrenders to Japan, ending the Russo-Japanese War.
• June 30, 1905, Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, including E=MC2.
• Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) is published, this follows his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).

1905/1906

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• On September 21, 1905, the cornerstone of the new Stuyvesant High School at 345 East 15th Street is laid by Commissioner Richard Adams, Chairman of the Building Committee of the Board of Education.
• The cornerstone holds copies of NYC daily newspapers, Board of Education documents, a Bible, a list of the teachers and students at SHS, and a copy of the Indicator. When the East 23rd Street school becomes too crowded, an annex is added for Stuyvesant freshmen at the former DeWitt Clinton annex near Broadway between 108th and 109th Streets, the Robert Simon School, PS 165.
• The Lowell Literary Society is founded
• The Orchestra is formed
• There are 21 faculty members
• The first issue of Caliper arrives January 2, 1906. Mr. Scholz writes the school song, “Stuyvesant, Dear Stuyvesant.”
• Colonel Bruce gives a speech on sub-target guns and presents one to the student body.
• The Rifle club is founded
• SHS Technical Society is founded
• The Crew Team started
• French Society founded.

The Wider World

• Apr. 18, 1906, San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires devastate a large part of the city. Official death count around 700.

1906/1907

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• On Jan.16, 1907, a fire seriously damages the 23rd Street building, and classes are moved to the annex for one week while repairs are made. Only one day of school is lost. On East 15th Street, at a cost of $1.25 million, city builders construct a permanent home for SHS. The building comprises 4 acres of floor space, numerous shops and other necessities for a technical high school education.
• Seniors have the option of enrolling in advanced physics. The annex, with 10 classrooms and two shops, continues to serve students, and in keeping with SHS spirit, maintains its own Annex Literary Society. SHS has 34 teachers, and student registration had doubled. A 25 page Student Guide is created. SHS crew participates in the Decoration Day Regatta on the Harlem River.

'07 Notable Graduates

• Albert A. Alexander, DDS '07 Professor, Columbia College of Dental and Oral Surgery (now Columbia Dental School); SHS and U. of Penn, baseball and track star.

The Wider World

• Christmas Eve 1906, the first commercial radio broadcast, Silent Night, is unexpectedly heard by wireless telegraph operators listening for Morse code.
• July 28, 1907 The first SteepleChase Park burns to the ground.
• Bakelite, first structural plastic, invented

1907/1908

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Ernest Von Nardoff
  Sept. 9, 1907, the new Stuyvesant building opens. Dr. Rollins leaves Stuyvesant to become the Assistant State Commissioner of Education in Albany.
• Dr. Ernest Von Nardroff, the eminent physicist, becomes principal. He will remain principal for 26 years.
• June 12, 1908, the new building is formally dedicated.
• A Camera Club is founded.
• The Crew Team wins third place in the Harlem Regatta.
• The Basketball Team takes second place in the PSAL Championship.
• The Stuyvesant Evening Trade School is started and soon has a waiting list.
• Dec. 23, the first alumni reunion is held and sets a precedent for holding reunions the week before Christmas.
• SHS holds its first public speaking contest.

Stuyvesant High School, 1907

'08 Notable Graduates

• Angelo Lipari, PhD '08 Chairman/Professor, Italian, Yale; authority on Dante; author, The Dolce Stil Novo According to Lorenzo De Medici

The Wider World

• The City College campus, designed by George B. Post in Collegiate Gothic, is completed.
• May 17, 1908 SteepleChase, rebuilt, reopens

The Re-opening of Steeplechase park

1908/1909

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• The Basketball Team defeats Central High School, Philadelphia and becomes the Champions of the Eastern Region. The team goes on to beat freshmen teams from Columbia, Yale, and CCNY.
• ARISTA is created as an honor society; ARISTA requires students to have an average of 75 % or better for admission and candidates must to be approved by the Senate, (a body comprised of the faculty and other ARISTA members).
• A SHS Indoor Track Meet occurrs at the 71st Regiment Armory.
• The Irving Dramatic Society is founded. Dramatic groups present “She Stoops to Conquer” and “Dr. Bilby’s Aeroplane.”
• Basketball wins third in PSAL Champs, so does the Rifle Team.
• The Swimming Team is formed.
• The Drum Corps organize.

'09 Notable Graduates

• Leo Roon Feb '09 Chief, chemical division, Squibb & Sons; Chemist, founder, Roxalin Flexible Finishes/Nuodex Products; Chairman, Industrial Section, NY Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Ass'n; Chairman, Board of Trustees, Columbia College of Pharmacy
• Manuel Komroff '09 Novelist, Coronet and 44 others; biographer, The One Story, Big City Little Boy, and for children, Beethoven, Jefferson, Caesar, Whitman; editor, The Travels of Marco Polo, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov; Editor-in-chief, The Russian Daily News, Petrograd; Socialist, husband to Elinor Barnard (noted portraitist), good friend of Eugene O'Neill

The Wider World

• Sep. 9, 1908, Orville Wright makes 1st 1-hr airplane flight, Fort Myer, VA.

1909/1910

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• The Stuyvesant Basketball Team is named “Champions of the East.”
• Hockey and Boxing Teams form.
• The Indicator enhances its athletic highlights with action pictures.
• Golf Club, Aeronautical Society, Chemistry Club, Sketch Club, Senior Debating Society, Societas Latina Stuyvesantensis, Civics Club, are all organized.
• The Radio Club starts and builds its first crystal set.

'10 Notable Graduates

• Ralph Colp, MD '10 Professor, Surgery, Mt. Sinai Medical School; Fellow, American College of Surgeons
• Henry Masson, PhD '10 Engineer & educator; Ass't Dean, Graduate Division Director, Dept. Chairman, Professor, NYU; petroleum technology specialist; inventor holding basic patent for the manufacture of carbon black, key ingredient in automobile tires.