This post was written by Luis Rodriguez, Collections Management Specialist.
If young students are feeling frustrated by the demands of the new school year, perhaps they can be grateful that they weren’t around a century ago when they might have been sent off to the New York Parental School in Flushing, Queens. The boys pictured here were deemed to be habitual truants and troublemakers and were therefore placed in this year-round boarding school, founded in 1909. The focus was on discipline and industrial training, and to this end the school operated a tailor shop, a farm, a bakery, and a laundry. The school closed in 1934, however, after an investigation into the apparently severe methods employed for the sake of “reform.”
The images themselves come from the William D. Hassler photograph collection. Hassler was a commercial photographer based in New York City from 1909 to 1921 and a collection of his work, which covers a wide range of subject matter is part of our digital collection Photographs of New York City and Beyond.
I spent many wonderful days in those buildings. Not as a “truant” but as a Queens College student! Queens College opened in 1937. The first class graduated in 1941. It is where I met my wife and many other lifelong friends. The school is still going strong. After a business career, I returned to the campus to manage commencement and major events for over 20 years. Having directed alumni affairs for a number of years, I strongly encourage all alumni to stay in touch with their alma mater.
Joe Brostek, QC ’55
Indeed, the New York Parental School is a fascinating study in the hopes of New Yorkers to rescue the lost boys of New York City (1909-1934). The essence of this experiment, I hope, is captured in my two-novel sequence, “AN ABUNDANCE OF DEVILS” (AuthorHouse, 2006), which is based on true stories I collected from a “bad kid” who went through hell there. The story is loaded with pathos, fear, high adventure, as well as great humor and true love.
The photographs in the Hassler Collection are precious and rare artifacts of this setting. Hassler’s images are similar in effect to those of Jacob Riis. What the eyes of those boys are seeing is reflected in the two books cited above, a real slice of life in New York City just before the Great War.
Moreover, a handful of those wonderful Spanish colonial buildings have survived and are integral parts of the modern campus of Queens College, City University of New York. I am reminded of Queens Poet Laureate Stephen Stepanchev’s telling me that when the English Department lived in one of those old dorm cottages, that he found a poignant graffiti on a window sill: “Ma, I love you.”
I was in Professor Stepanchev’s poetry class in 1968. He was giving a brief history of Queens College and what preceded it. He referred to the graffiti, and quoted, “Ma I love you.” He added, ” words that still haunt me to this day.”
The line appears in a memorial poem he wrote to Queens College. I have become a writer, partly as a challenge to previously being an academic underperformer. As a writer my challenge has been to get to the point, which may have been the reason for my late blooming. Professor Stepanchev was encouraging. At a conference he commented, “I expected more from you.” For a number of years writing I have shared my work with some of my previous instructors. I wanted a way of showing Professor Stepanchev how much his challenge motivated me. I was doing some research, and found this site. I am writing about motivation I got from Professor Stepanchev’s poem, In Flushing Cemetery.