Packer Collegiate Institute 1918 Yrbk, Brooklyn Heights

Brooklyn, New York.
Cloth hard covers with pictures of pelicans and year 1918 in gilt on the front, oblong quarto, 106 pages, many b&w photographs of students, campus, faculty, clubs, Class Day, vintage photographs, b&w line ink drawings by students, students’ writings including poetry about “A Trip Down Fulton Street”, vintage advertisements for Brooklyn-based businesses, Jello.

“PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE, a private school in Brooklyn Heights with a network of Gothic-style buildings around a picturesque 1854 main building, looks as if it could be an Ivy League campus -- although these days it has significantly less ivy. The school, at 170 Joralemon Street, is expanding, as it rebuilds the interior of the former St. Ann's Episcopal Church building, at Clinton and Livingston Streets, which it has owned since 1967. Clustered around a large, open courtyard, the structures form a distinctive suite of buildings, even for an architecturally rich neighborhood like Brooklyn Heights.
Packer was opened in 1846 as the Brooklyn Female Academy in a large temple-fronted structure on Joralemon Street, between Court and Clinton Streets. Backed by Brooklyn's leading families, it had 350 students and a tuition of $40 a year. The school prospered, but in 1853 a fire leveled its new building, casting doubt on its future. Harriet Packer, widow of a fur dealer, William S. Packer, offered $65,000 for a replacement structure -- as long as it was designed by Minard Lafever.
By this time Lafever was one of the most influential architects in the United States. He began as a carpenter around 1820 but in 1829 published ''The Young Builders' General Instructor,'' followed by ''Modern Builders' Guide'' in 1833, ''The Beauties of Architecture'' in 1835 and ''The Architectural Instructor'' in 1850. At this period in the United States there were few who claimed the title architect, and most structures were designed and put up by builders.
Lafever did not hew to any particular style. His St. James Church on James Street near Madison Street in Manhattan (1837) is Greek Revival, his Old Whaling Church in Sag Harbor, N.Y. (1844) is Egyptian Revival, his brownstone St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church at Montague and Clinton Streets in Brooklyn Heights (1847) is neo-Gothic and his Church of the Holy Apostles at Ninth Avenue and 28th Street in Manhattan (1848-1854) is Romanesque/Italianate.
The Packer building was his last commission -- it opened in 1854, the year he died. Lafever designed a near-castle in Tudor Gothic style, with 30 schoolrooms, and a two-story-high chapel on the third floor. Two towers of different size, and the off-center arrangement of two large peaked gables, give the school the exterior appearance of picturesque irregularity common to the Gothic revival. But the interior plans -- reproduced in Jacob Landy's 1970 ''The Architecture of Minard Lefever'' -- show a compact, symmetrical grid, with long crossed hallways dividing the building into quadrants.
An observatory was originally situated at the top of one of the towers. The school retains a large garden area to the south, through the block, creating a broad playground facing Livingston Street.
The architectural historian Andrew Dolkart says that the Packer building is ''one of the earliest and most sophisticated evocations of English-inspired Collegiate Gothic, creating the educational atmosphere of Oxford and Cambridge.''
When the building opened, the trustees renamed the school Packer Collegiate Institute. A row house was connected to the building for boarding students. A list of graduates from 1860 showed that, although most were from Brooklyn, there were also students from Sag Harbor, Sandusky, Ohio, Savannah, Ga., and Detroit.
In 1887 the school added a gym building to the east. Although the addition did not exactly match the earlier building, its architect, Napoleon LeBrun, clearly sought a complementary design and used the brick, brownstone and Gothic-style moldings of the original building, leavening it with Victorian-style brownstone carving.
IN 1907 the school built a similar addition to the west, designed by LeBrun's son, Pierre, also in sympathetic style. In the 1940's the school developed a plan for a third Gothic-style addition by the architects Chapman, Evans & Delehanty, at the corner of Clinton and Joralemon, but by the time of construction in the 1950's, it had been so simplified it only hinted at its precedents.”
From “A Touch of Ivy League Grows in Brooklyn Heights” By Christopher Gray
New York Times, September 8, 2002

The graduates were:

Fannie BENEDICT
Marion BERNARD
Munez Maude BICKLEY
Natalie IVERS BOMEISLER
Amy FERRIS BRIGGS
Katharine BURR
Edith FOSTER BUTLER
Mildred STARBUCK BUTLER
Beatrice Bernadetta BYRNES
Bertha Helen CLEGG
Hannah GOODWIN CONNOR
Marion BELDEN COOK
Jane JORALEMON DAVENPORT
May LINCOLN DeLACY
Chloe Estelle DeMONDE
Alva Helen DURRING
Marie Magdeline DURRING
Emma Augusta FAEHRMANN
Marian MAURY FIELD
Dorothea Virginia FINKELL
Jean ANDERSON FITZSIMMONS
Anna Elizabeth FORD
Meta OTTEN HEISSENBUTTEL
Mary ST. CLAIR HESTER
Ruth HOFFMAN
Dorethea Elfriede HOFFMAN
Sudie GRAHAM HUFF
Constance Leah JENKINS
Lorraine KUNKEL
Ruth LANGMUIR
Elizabeth CLIFTON LANGTHORNE
Vera Joyce MACOMBER
Helen MALCOLM
Miriam Ruth MEEK
Marjorie Ellenor MEYN
Marian MORRIS
Dorothy ARMSTRONG MULLEN
Annie Frances NAPIER
Margaret OFFERMAN
Mildred Henrietta PIRNIE
Eleanor PRENDERGAST
Catherine SPALL RAWLINGS
Florence Mildred REY
Mabel Naomi REYNOLDS
Vivian L. RICHTMYER
Frances PALMER ROSSE
Elizabeth BERGEN SHEPARD
Florence SPARKS
Vera Florence STELLWAGEN
Dorothy PRUYN SWIFT
Alice WILMARTH THOMPSON
Helen Laura TYRREL
Alice Carmen WICKS
Hester GRIFF WILSON
Prudence WILSON
Margaret LOWNSBURY WINFIELD


Very scarce vintage Packer Yearbook.

Condition: Good- covers and Very Good- interior. (Covers have considerable spotting, wear at corner and spine ends. Name of original owner (graduate) on front endpaper. Clean contents. Tight binding.)

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