Timeline & Notable Graduates

1910/1911

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• The Baseball Team takes second in Greater New York, and first in Manhattan.
• Stuyvesant's tennis team participates in its first match.
• In November, the Gymnastics Team organizes.
• The Fencing Club forms.
• The Bunsen Chemical Society and the Short Story Club are organized.

'11 Notable Graduates

• David Klein '11 Founder/President, U.S. Bronze Sign Co.
• Jacob Lieberman, returned to SHS to teach chemistry in 1916 for over 50 years.

The Wider World

• Pennsylvania Station is built.

1911/1912

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Track wins a PSAL Championship and takes first in Greater New York.
• The Chess Team is second in the city.
• The Architectural, Engineering, and Philatelic Societies form.
• In April, the Freshman Class presents a play, “The Lost Purse.”

'12 Notable Graduates

• William McKerer '12 VP, Chris-Craft Company
• Lewis Mumford '12 Urban planner, architectural and social critic; Author, Sidewalk Critic; lifelong opponent of large-scale public works; co-founder, Regional Planning Association of American; awarded National Medal for Literature, National Medal of Arts, U.S. Medal of Freedom and Knight of the Order of the British Empire
• Guy B. Panero '12 Principal, Guy B. Panero Engineers & Panero-Weidlinger Salvadori, Paris, Rome and Lausanne; project work for Rockefeller Center, Jefferson Memorial, and Royal Medical Center of Baghdad
• Felix E. Wormser '12 Mining engineer; US Ass't Secretary of the Interior; Director, Lead Industries Association; VP, St. Joseph Lead Company

The Wider World

• The Titanic, 1912
  April 15, 1912 The British luxury liner Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg; 1,500 die.

1912/1913

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• SHS Riflemen are City Champions. Students form The Forge Club to advance the arts of forging, tool-making, hammered-metal and art and metal work.
• The Rifle Team wins the championships for 75-foot ranges.
• A Washington Irving issue of Caliper, is published, combining photos of their high school with its chief features and history.

'13 Notable Graduates

• William I. Hohauser '13 Architect, NYC theaters, luxury apartments; received "quite decent" appraisal from harsh critic and fellow Stuyvesant alum Lewis Mumford '12 for Manhattan low-rises
• Charles W. Taussig '13 Industrialist, American Molasses Company; Member, FDR's New Deal "Brain Trust"; Caribbean authority; Economic Advisor to UN Charter Commission; Author, Rum, Romance, and Rebellion; Chairman, National Advisory Committee, National Youth Adminstration
• Philip Sporn '13 President, American Power Co.; electrical engineer; author, Technology, Engineering, and Economics; National Academy of Sciences; National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress; John Fritz Medal (1956), joining former winners Bell, Edison, Goethals, Wright, and Marconi

The Wider World

• Grand Central Terminal is built.
• Cellophane invented

1913/1914

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• A two-session system is introduced due to large increases in enrollment.
• Caliper, containing 56 double column pages of cartoons, stories, jokes, and school news, is named best high school monthly in the country.
• The Track Team wins the coveted Princeton Meet.
• The swimming team becomes PSAL Champs.

'14 Notable Graduates

• Leffert Holz, Esq '14 NYS Insurance Superintendent; real estate tax law authority
• Herman Jessor '14 Architect, designed over 40,000 units of publicly subsidized co-operative housing; employed in the United Housing Federation
• Saul Streit '14 NYS Supreme Court Justice; heard case of Alice De Rivera vs. NYC Board of Education re her right to take test for Stuyvesant HS, and ordered the City to show cause in Jan. 1969, paving the way for Alice to take the exam; ruled in 1951 college basketball betting scandal case
• Herbert E. Vollmer '14 Olympic Bronze Medalist (1924), water polo; Set numerous swimming records at Stuyvesant HS and Columbia

The Wider World

• The Ford assembly line
  Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company builds the first moving assembly line, and introduces a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.
• By 1914, unemployment and economic problems in Greece lead to migrations (almost entirely to US) of 350,000, one-fifth the total population
• June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is shot, leading to outbreak of World War I.
• Aug. 15, 1914, Panama Canal, major engineering feat of the twentieth century, opens.

1914/1915

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• In February, the first issue of The Spectator appears; the newspaper calls itself the ‘pulse of the student body’.
• Rifle Team members organize the Stuyvesant Training Corps, the nation’s first volunteer unit, in response to conditions abroad. 300 men train, and a battalion is formed. The Corps engages in “drill-down” competition against Clinton and participates in Decoration Day Parades. Rifles are supplied by the War Dept while uniforms are purchased with funds raised at a Review and Formal Ball at the 71st Regiment Armory. Hikes and "battles" are staged in Van Cortlandt Park, Spring Valley and Dunwoodie, NY, with weekly drills at the Armory.
• A symphony orchestra is formed.
• Track wins the PSAL Championship.

'15 Notable Graduates

• Joseph V. McMullan '15 Engineer; VP, Naylor Pipe Company; designed hydraulic dredges, portable pipelines, shortening WWII North African campaign; world-famous Islamic rug collector; author, Don't Forget to Stop and Smell the Flowers Along the Way
• Nathaniel Rose '15 Transportation executive
• Fred Schoenberg '15 Principal, Stuyvesant HS, 1943-1952; deputy, high school division, NYC Superintendent of Schools

The Wider World

• Jan. 25, 1915, The inventor Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates U.S. transcontinental telephone service. Schedules commercial service to begin Mar. 1, 1915.
• Apr. 24, 1915, Armenian Genocide by Young Turk Party begins, as 300 leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (now Istanbul) are deported and killed; 1.5 of 2.5 million Armenians are murdered by 1922.

1915/1916

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Footballers beat Clinton at the Polo Grounds 43-0, with a record attendance of 6,000.
• Faculty baseball team defeats the seniors.
• “Bibliophiles” discussed literature.
• Cross-Country track wins Manhattan Championship.
• The Stuyvesant Training Corps is organized; Captain Henry F. Davidson, father of Garrison H. Davidson '23 (who was the mascot of the STC), is the Drill Instructor.

'16 Notable Graduates

• Ralph DeJur '16 President, DeJur-Amsco, manufacturer, electrical precision instruments, components, cameras, photographic apparatus, and photoelectric cells.
• Jack Kriendler '16 Restaurateur; founder/owner, NYC's famed '21' Club
• Samuel Spewack ’16 Prolific playwright, Kiss Me Kate; screenwriter, Boy Meets Girl; Novelist, Murder in a Gilded Cage; Non-fiction, Red Russia Revealed: The Truth About the Soviet Government and Its Methods; WWII information officer in London, producing The World at War & later in Moscow, assigned to Averill Harriman

The Wider World

• April 24, 1916, Irish Easter Revolt.

1916/1917

'17 Notable Graduates

• Ray Arcel '17 International Boxing Hall of Fame, Jewish Sports Hall of Fame; Trained 20 world boxing champions, the first in 1924 (Abe Goldstein), and the last in 1982 (Larry Holmes); five of his fighters won world titles in 1934!
• James Cagney '17 Actor/dancer; our "Most famous Stuyvesantian"; Oscar-winning Best Actor, Yankee Doodle Dandy; American Film Institute Life Achievement Award; president/founding member, Screen Actors Guild; 33¢ USA commemorative stamp, legends of Hollywood; Black Belt in Judo;14th Greatest Movie Star of all time, Entertainment Weekly
• Andrew A. Farago '17 Chemist; VP, D'orsay Perfumes
• Edward Kilinski '17 Geologist, explorer, writer; specialist in foreign oil discovery---in Venezuela, the Guianas, Mexico, Canada
• Eugene R. Kulka '17 Founder/President, Kulka Electric Co.
• Brig. Gen. Alfred Reuthershan '17 CO, 71st Regiment, NY National Guard

The Wider World

• Kingsland Explosion at Kingsland, NJ (now Lyndhurst, NJ) Due to German sabotage, leads to the U.S. involvement in World War I.
• February 5 - The constitution of Mexico is adopted.

1917/1918

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• More than 400 faculty and students enter into service during WWI; 19 die: Walter Antosch, Otto Brandt, John Brotherton, Frederick M. Fischer, Jacob O. Gilcher, Nathan Golob, William D. Gray, Calvin W. Greene, Richard Morgan, Frank K. Neumark, David H. Rogers, Harold E. Russell, George Schnitzler, Irving Slicklen, Frank B. Stadler, Nicholas Stark, Charles F. Volk, Stephen S. Warner, and Churchill P. Webster.
• Dr. Frederick Houk Law organizes the first high school journalism class in the US.
• The Track Team is PSAL Indoor Track Champs.
• The Basketball Team wins as “Champions of the East.”
• The PSAL holds a freshman swimming meet and SHS places first.
• The Drawing Team wins the Municipal Art Trophy.
• Chess wins Manhattan and Bronx Championship.
• The New Journal and Stuyvesant Daily Bulletin appear.
• The Radio Club is awarded its own call signal, from a modern, 50-watt transmitting station, which is heard in Germany and England, as well as by other amateurs in the US.
• Football is discontinued due to war.
• Students solicit more than $1 million for the 3 Liberty Campaigns.
• The Junior Red Cross has 100% membership within two days and SHS has a Red Cross drive, an Armenian Relief Fund, and a Fund for the Relief of Disabled French Soldiers.
• Faculty contribute more to the Ambulance Fund than the faculty of any other City high school. The proceeds of two semi-annual concerts go to the Red Cross Fund, which purchases materials for students to build--in school shops--furniture that are needed in hospitals.
• When the military training law goes into effect, members of the Stuyvesant Training Corps teach military tactics to civilian students. Our Corps is the best trained military organization of all the NYC high schools, and is formally recognized by the government.

'18 Notable Graduates:

• Abram J. Abeloff, MD '18 Director, Surgery, Lenox Hill Hospital; Columbia trustee; Colonel, U.S. Army Medical Corps consulting surgeon, WW II Persian Gulf Command, Legion of Merit
• Gustave Rosenberg '18 Chancellor, NYC Board of Higher Education
• Chester H. Roth '18 President, Kayser-Roth, brands including Calvin Klein and TImberland; Founder, Chester H. Roth Company
• Abraham Taub '18 Professor, Pharmacology, Columbia University; $1 million donor to Columbia in 1962; fellow, American Institute of Chemists and American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Robert J. Trainor '18 NYS Supreme Court Justice

The Wider World

• Barnes & Noble opens the largest bookstore in the world at 122 Fifth Avenue.

1918/1919

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• The Corps becomes inactive.
• Stuyvesant has 50 organizations.
• A Club Council is formed, with 2 representatives from each club, to ensure cooperation among clubs.
• SHS contributes $436.96 to French orphans, and $4,219.15 to the “Victory Boy” Movement.

'19 Notable Graduates

• Harry A. Charipper, PhD '19 Chairman/professor, Biology, NYU
• Ted Husing '19 Sportscaster, largely responsible for the advent of play-by-lay broadcasting; most popular sportscaster in national poll; author, My Eyes are in my Heart

The Wider World

• Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice ending World War I is signed.
• Jan. 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president when SHS opened in Sept. 1904, dies in Oyster Bay, N.Y. at age 60.

1919/1920

Stuyvesant and NYC Public Schools

• Admission to Stuyvesant HS is restricted, based on elementary school academic achievement.
• Mathematics, advanced chemistry and physics courses strengthen the curriculum as Stuyvesant transforms to a "science high school", the first in the City.
• Shop classes in carpentry, pattern-making, blacksmithing, and ship design are offered.
• Students practice surveying in Stuyvesant Park.
• Increased enrollment leads to two sessions, each consisting of six periods: morning classes run from 8:00am to 12:35pm, while the afternoon session is from 12:40pm to 5:20pm.
• The Journalism Club is founded.
• "A Pageant of Democracy" is staged.
• The freshman swimmers win in the PSAL (Public School Athletic League).

'20 Notable Graduates

• Capt. Joseph R. Horn '20 U.S. Navy Dental Corps
• August Henry Nordhausen '20 Artist, portraits and nudes

The Wider World

• Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing American women who are citizens the right to vote.
• CUNY opens the largest business college in the US, it will be named for Bernard Baruch in 1953.