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Last week, 122-year old Jamaica High School, 168th Street and Gothic Drive, graduated its last class, in a phase-out that began in 2011 when the school ended admissions. As recently as 1985 the school was considered the best secondary school in America in 1985 by the U.S. Department of Education.

Dear Old Jamaica High, by Harwood Hoadley:

There is a certain High School out in old Jamaica Town

Of all the schools we’ve ever known she most deserves renown

Her boys are strong and manly and her girls are beyond compare

And Royal Red and Loyal Blue are the colors that they wear

In gym, on track, on diamond her honor we maintain

In oratory and debate for her fresh laurels gain

Her fame’s upheld by song and play, for loyal each and all

We rally to defend her name and gather at her call

Then cheer for old Jamaica High, the school without a peer

We’ll cherish long the memory of the days we’re spending here

Prosperity be always hers, courageous purpose high

And loyal love attend her and fame that shall not die

That’s from The Beaver Book, a fascinating history of Jamaica High School from 1892-1927. The book took its name from the now-filled-in Beaver Pond, just south of downtown Jamaica. The school mascot was also a beaver.

Did the Swingin’ Sixties kill school pride? I can imagine Jeff Spicoli or David Wooderson barely suppressing a snicker. Mr. Hand would love it, though.

Ground was broken for imposing Jamaica High School March 25, 1925; it was completed in 1927. It resembles Fort Hamilton High in Bay Ridge and Franklin K. Lane in Cypress Hills, with all three hailing from the same decade.

Prominent Jamaica High graduates include filmmakers Josef von Sternberg and Francis Ford Coppola, science writer Stephen Jay Gould, humorist Art Buchwald, Brooklyn Dodgers owner and mover Walter O’Malley, and John Mitchell, the Watergate-era US Attorney General.

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Another long-vanished school, known as the State Normal School, once stood nearby at Highland Avenue and Parsons Boulevard. I first became aware of this old school when bicycling in the area in the 1990s and encountering Normal Road, which runs between 162nd Street and Parsons Boulevard south of 85th Avenue. The reason behind this name wasn’t immediately apparent,  but I remembered Normal, a mid-sized town in central Illinois, and researched that name. In the 1860s it adopted the name from Illinois State Normal University; in turn, normal schools are teacher training schools and are so-called for teaching standards, or norms. Perhaps there was just such a school in the area at one time, and Normal Road is named for it?

Yes indeed, PS 86 and Hillcrest High School were built on a parcel at the corner of Highland Avenue and Parsons Boulevard which used to be the site of Jamaica’s own teachers’ school, the “Normal School” which was razed in the late 1960s.

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Thomas A. Edison Vocational and Technical High School [Here’s a student-written Wikipedia link] at 84th Avenue west of 168th is what high schools were built to look like in the 1950s. The more grandiose, columned Jamaica High stands a block or so away. Edison opened in 1950. The school offers both vocational and college preparatory courses.


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  1. I went to Edison, very 50’s inside and it has a nice courtyard in the middle with a bust of Thomas Edison but we were never allowed in it, administration treated us like it was a Juve center. Went to Summer School at Jamaica HS one year, that place is huge with a huge campus and nice park with a lake across the street. My zoned school Franklin K. Lane was similar to Jamaica but with a much worse reputation hence why I went to Edison instead. Lane HS was also broken up into multiple schools but I remember just looking at it in awe when I took classes there or visited family and friends who attended.