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8 Ibid., 148–63. Reese also used as his case studies four medium sized cities—Milwaukee, Rochester, Kansas City, and Toledo. These municipalities began vacation schools in 1899, 1899, 1901, and 1901 respectively—after public takeover had occurred in New York. That the New York reformers who started vacation schools were elite professionals and businessmen rather than middle class women as in the cities studied by Reese did not significantly alter the aims or constitution of the summer program.Google Scholar

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12 See for example Katz, Michael B. Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (expanded edition) (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975); Eric Monkkonen, Police in Urban America: 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

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14 These included visiting resorts and institutes or going camping or touring. Stuart A. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 258–97; Cindy S. Aron, Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

15 Nasaw, David Children of the City: At Work and At Play, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985), 40; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1186.Google Scholar

16 Nasaw, Children of the City, 24; Jeffrey Mirel, “Progressive School Reform in Comparative Perspective,” in Southern Cities, Southern Schools: Public Education in the Urban South, ed. David Plank and Rick Ginsberg (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 160–63; Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973: A History of the Public Schools as Battlefield of Social Change (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1974), 138–39.Google Scholar

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19 See Wallace, Burrows and Gotham, 1191–208, 1219–36; Ravitch, Great School Wars, 134–58.Google Scholar

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21 Among its earliest institutional creations, the AICP set up a juvenile asylum, a children's aid society, workingman's home, public washing and bathing establishments. Martha J. Lamb and Barton Harrison, History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress, vol. III (New York: A. S. Barnes Company, 1896), 763–64; J.F. Richmond, New York and its Institutions, 1609–1873 (New York: E. B. Treat, 1872), 506; Frank Dekker Watson, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States: A Study in American Philanthropy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 81; Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 86–94.Google Scholar

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23 The AICP had to scale down its original hopes for some public funding or even the use of leftover materials. Instead, it agreed to pay for all expenses, including the salaries of teachers and janitors and the maintenance of the buildings. In addition, it allowed the school trustees for each ward to select the teachers and principals for the schools. Moreover, the board repeatedly cautioned the AICP not to let vacation classes get in the way of school repairs. Eventually, a school in one of the wards was not utilized because of upcoming building work. The board did concede on another issue by allowing public school teachers and administrators to work in the vacation schools. Ironically, this grudging permission later became an adamant demand. Board of Education, July 11, 1894, 926–27; New York Times, July 6, 1894; July 18, 1894; July 24, 1894; AICP, Annual Report, (1893–94), 214–16.Google Scholar

24 In 1895 the AICP received about 280 donations ranging from $100 to $600. Its contributors included John D. Rockefeller and Joseph Pulitzer. New York Times, July 13, 1895; July 22, 1896; June 6, 1897; AICP, Annual Report, (1893–94), 217–19; Locke, “Report of the Department of Schools,” 5.Google Scholar

25 New York Times, July 24, 1894; July 13, 1895; June 6, 1897; AICP, In the Dog Days: The Vacation Schools Season 1896, 4; AICP, Annual Report, (1897), 127; Annual Report, (1893–94), 83, 217. Vacation schools also retained large numbers of students throughout the summer. In 1897, New York's vacation schools attracted 6,138 students the first week, and taught 5,132 five weeks later. Department of Education, City of New York, Manhattan and the Bronx. Report on Vacation Schools and Playgrounds, (1898), 8.Google Scholar

26 Selma Cantor Berrol's work on the immigrant's experience in New York City schools uncovered no city wide tabulation of ethnicity by the public school system for the regular schools, let alone the vacation schools. The repository for the board of education archives has no record of any survey ever existing, nor did the AICP publish any data on its vacation schools. Berrol, Immigrants at School: New York City, 1898–1914 (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 95–97.Google Scholar

27 New York Times, July 24, 1894; July 16, 1896; AICP, Annual Report, (1896), 112–13; Annual Report, (1897), 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 AICP, Annual Report, (1893–94), 83; New York Times, May 14, 1896; July 13, 1897.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., June 20, 1895.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., August 24, 1895.Google Scholar

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33 Cavallo, Dominick Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880–1920. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 49–52.Google Scholar

34 Department of Education, Vacation Schools, (1898), 51–53.Google Scholar

35 New York Times, June 20, 1895; AICP, Dog Days, 5; Annual Report, (1893–94), 84.Google Scholar

36 Each school did not provide coursework in every subject area, and the curriculum varied by age and sex. Older boys, for example, worked with wood in carpentry and design, and map drawing, and military drill, while young girls performed simple sewing and singing. AICP, Annual Report, (1893–94), 82; New York Times, July 18, 1894; Locke, “Report of the Department of Schools,” 10–12.Google Scholar

37 AICP, Annual Report, (1896), 84.Google Scholar

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40 AICP, Dog Days, 3; Annual Report, (1895), 83; Department of Education, Vacation Schools (1898), 8.Google Scholar

41 AICP, Annual Report, (1893–94), 82.Google Scholar

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43 Hubbell, Charles President of the Board of Education, facilitated the process. The Board of School Superintendents, following a positive report from its Committee on School Management, recommended to the Board of Education that the city sponsor vacation schools. The latter board, in turn, secured an appropriation of $10,000 for vacation schools in December, 1897, oversaw their design over the next six months, and appointed Seth Stewart as Chairman of the Committee on Vacation Schools and Playgrounds. Department of Education, Vacation Schools (1898), 6–7.Google Scholar

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49 Department of Education, Vacation Schools (1898), 8–10; Ravitch, Great School Wars, 118.Google Scholar

50 New York Times, August 18, 1897; September 14, 1897; June 30, 1898; July 12, 1898; Charles Mulford Robinson, “Vacation Schools,” Educational Review 17 (March 1899): 256.Google Scholar

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55 Abelow relates that in 1909, Whitney “visited Dr. Maxwell at his office one day and, for some reason, gave him the most severe tongue-lashing he had ever received in his life. Miss Whitney was there with a friend of hers. He turned to the friend and remarked that he had taken a scolding from her that he would not have taken from any one else.” Abelow, Dr. William H. Maxwell, 27, 58, 73, 168; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 3, 1910.Google Scholar

56 Children who wanted to work at age 14 needed to demonstrate a legal minimum of days in attendance at school in order to obtain a work certificate. Department of Education, Annual Report (1905–06), 121.Google Scholar

57 Maxwell also lobbied for an academic summer high school, but was unsuccessful until 1911. Department of Education, Annual Report (1907–08), 137, 517; Annual Report (1908–09), 149, 554–57; Annual Report (1909–10), 153–54, 477; Berrol, Immigrants at School, 153–56.Google Scholar

58 Department of Education, Annual Report (1908–09), 149, 554. In 1912, there were 13,000 pupils in 320 elementary continuation classes and 2,400 students in 80 secondary continuation classes. William H. Maxwell, “How to Help the Backward Children,” Missouri School Journal 39 (1912):540.Google Scholar

59 Department of Education, Annual Report (1901–02), 155. In the afternoons of the summer months, the Board opened up schoolyards for supervised play. These summer playgrounds, easier and cheaper to run, began after the vacation schools but immediately surpassed them in the number of sites opened and students served.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., (1898–99), 178.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., (1899–1900), 71–72.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., (1900–01), 57.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., (1901–02), 156–57. One factor that delayed centralization was the imperfect consolidation of New York City's boroughs. After 1898, summer classes in Manhattan and Brooklyn continued to be administered separately. Only in 1902 did Maxwell bring the vacation schools of each borough under one management.Google Scholar

64 Board of Education, April 25, 1906, 705–6.Google Scholar

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67 Ibid., (1901–02), 155–56. In 1899, for example, eight of ten vacation schools opened were located in New York's lower east side, “on account of the density of the population.” Department of Education, Vacation Schools (1900), 22.Google Scholar

68 Department of Education, Annual Report (1898–99), 141. In 1901 vacation schools still predominated the “congested quarters of the east side,” but two new schools served a Bohemian and Hungarian neighborhood in the upper east side. Also, for the first time a school was opened “designed especially to appeal to the colored people in that vicinity (West 40th Street).” New York Times, May 11, 1901.Google Scholar

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70 Ibid., (1904–05), 506–45.Google Scholar

71 In 1899, the board granted all 248 applications for vacation school licenses; in 1901, it approved 404 of 407. Ibid., (1898–99), 49, 178–79; (1900–01), 43.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., (1900–01), 43; New York Times, July 15, 1900.Google Scholar

73 Department of Education, Vacation Schools (1898), 12, 21. In keeping with the ethos of vacation schools, Jasper desired an even ratio of experienced to inexperienced teachers.Google Scholar

74 In 1902 Maxwell had lamented that “in no other department of our work is the demand for the appointment of teachers not on the ground of special qualifications, but on the ground of special favor, so frequent and so imperious as in these [vacation] schools.” Department of Education, Annual Report (1901–02), 46, 65–66.Google Scholar

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77 Board of Education, July 8, 1907, 1294–300. The board of education created ten licenses for vacation schools, ranging from substitute kindergarten helper to supervisor.Google Scholar

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