From the ashes of Bridgeport High School rose Prospect Street School
With tunney sig and photo: The Opera HouseBy Glenn Tunney For the Herald-Standard
King Robert, who was standing near the throne,
Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone!
But all apparelled as in days of old
With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold;
And when his courtiers came, they found him there
Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in, silent prayer.
As Leta McAlpine recited the final lines of Longfellow’s poem, “King Robert of Sicily,” she wondered if anyone in the Opera House audience was paying any attention to her at all.
“I really had the feeling that no one was listening,” she recalled many years later. “I wasn’t even sure I was saying anything. But I lived through the ordeal somehow.”
Leta’s recitation of the classic poem had seemed interminable, even to her. She could sense that all in attendance in the Brownsville Opera House were on the edge of their seats. Sadly, the cause of the audience’s excitement was not the gripping tale of King Robert of Sicily, but rather the stunning rumor that Bridgeport High School, from which Leta and 13 other members of the Class of 1908 were graduating in this very ceremony, was at that moment in flames on Bridgeport hill.
Leta, feeling compassion for Alice Steele, whose valedictory address was next on the program, smiled weakly as she finished reciting her poem. The distracted audience applauded politely and anxiously consulted their programs. Leta knew they were mentally calculating how much longer it would be before they could dash from the building to see for themselves what was happening on upper Prospect Street, the site of Bridgeport High School.
Leta walked across the stage to rejoin her classmates in the lower box seats, the class’ place of honor for the evening. At the back of the huge stage, which was gaily decorated in the class colors of amethyst and gold, was displayed the Latin motto of her class: “Non scholae sed vitael discimus.” Leta settled into her seat as Alice began her valedictory address, relieved that her recitation was over and anxious for the commencement program to end. She too wanted to hurry across the creek and up Scrabbletown hill (High Street) to witness the shocking demise of her beloved school.
As Alice Steele addressed the audience on the topic “On Life’s Threshold,” Leta tried to imagine the tumult that was occurring outside the Opera House. She could hardly believe that only three nights ago, she and her 13 classmates had sat together happily at the baccalaureate service in the Second Methodist Episcopal Church on Second Street. They had listened as Dr. S.B. McCormick, chancellor of the Western University (now the University of Pittsburgh), had emphasized the importance of maintaining high ideals and striving for better Christian citizenship.
Dr. McCormick’s message had been well-received by the overflow audience. Classmate Nell Waggoner had played the organ masterfully, and as Leta glanced appreciatively toward Nell, she tried to recall exactly where each of her fellow classmates had been seated at the service. In addition to Nell Waggoner and her friend Jane Marshall, she could easily remember the placement of the other girls in the class. There were the two Margarets, Connelly and Mason, plus Ellen Springer, Julia Hurst, Bertha Jones, Helen O’Donnell, and Alice Steele. Leta smiled as she recalled the antics over the years of the four boys in her class – Billy Acklin, Frank Garwood, Campbell Jones and Lacey Brown. How patient Mr. Pratt, the photographer, had been as he had posed all of them for their class photograph at the school . . .
The school! Now Leta felt the same restlessness that had already gripped the audience as she realized that their impressive 12-room schoolhouse was burning, even as these commencement exercises dragged on. Mercifully, Alice Steele had kept her valedictory oration brief, and now Mr. C.G. Lewellyn, the county school superintendent, was speaking. He set aside his prepared address because of the events transpiring outside, made a few appropriate remarks, and then formally presented the 14 graduates with their diplomas.
Principal O.O. Saylor’s address was similarly succinct, and the ceremony ended poignantly with the entire class singing its farewell song, which Leta and Nell had composed to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Leta felt a tightness in her throat as she sang, realizing that this sad farewell to old Bridgeport High School might be far more permanent than she or Nell could ever have anticipated.
When the Rev. Charles R. Harman, pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church, uttered the word “Amen” at the end of his closing benediction, there was a rush for the exits by young and old alike. Leta joined the exodus, realizing that everyone had the same destination in mind: upper Prospect Street, where Bridgeport High School was burning.
As Leta hurried toward the stairs leading to the Opera House’s ground floor, she realized that it was nearly 10 o’clock. Almost half an hour had passed since the audience had first heard the supposedly false report of a fire at the school. As she struggled to keep up with the throng descending the stairs, Leta thought she recognized a young man ahead of her, escorting a girl she knew.
“Isn’t that McCready Huston?” she wondered, eyeing the slender 23-year-old who had taught school in Brownsville for four years before landing a job with the Uniontown Morning Herald. She recalled noticing Huston seated in the gallery with Sara Lenhart during the commencement ceremony. Now Leta could see that like everyone else, he and Sara were hurrying to get out of the Opera House and join the excited crowd, drawn like moths to the flames arising from Bridgeport hill.
Leta stepped out of the Opera House onto the sidewalk. Without consciously deciding to do so, she raised her hand to cover her mouth and nose, only then realizing that the night air was thick with acrid smoke. Squinting to protect her suddenly stinging eyes, Leta noticed that everyone was staring to the west, many pointing to something in the distance. She followed their upraised arms with her eyes and gasped in horror at what she saw. The night sky across Dunlap Creek was a brilliant flickering orange, and the town was being showered with hundreds of tiny glowing cinders floating lazily downward upon the Neck.
Leta gasped in alarm as a live spark landed on her shoulder, threatening to burn a hole in her homemade lawn dress. She swatted it more vigorously than was necessary to extinguish it. Then, anxiously scanning the sky for other threatening sparks, she fell in with the multitude hurrying across the Iron Bridge toward Bridgeport. It was clear to everyone in the crowd that the flames toward which they were hurrying were not emanating from a burning stable, as had first been erroneously reported in the Opera House.
Finally arriving breathlessly near the top of Prospect Street, Leta stood with the crowd in the cool May night air and watched men frantically trying to maneuver a hose into position to combat the raging inferno. The men had been washing down the pavement in the Neck when the alarm had sounded. They had immediately rushed to the scene, but their efforts were hopelessly ineffective against the roaring flames. Only a fortuitous easterly wind saved the home of R.L. Aubrey, which was nearest the school, and the other nearby structures.
It was a long and emotional night. When dawn came on Thursday morning, the crowd had gone home, chattering as they dispersed into the cold night, exhausted from the evening’s events. By daybreak, all that remained of the three-story building was a heap of smoldering ash surrounded by four blackened brick walls.
On the ash-littered lawn in front of the ruined school was an odd anomaly. Protruding vertically from the ground, straight as a ramrod, was the charred trunk of a sapling that had been planted only a few days earlier. The Bridgeport High School Class of 1908, not realizing that it would be the last class to graduate from this building, had started a tradition of planting a tree on the school grounds.
On Friday, the town’s weekly newspaper, the Clipper-Monitor, reported the details of the fire. The newspaper, formed in January of the previous year by the consolidation of the Brownsville Clipper (established 1853) and the Brownsville Monitor (established 1889), published a skillfully rendered pencil drawing of the school as it had appeared before the fire, while describing the Wednesday night blaze as “a most tragic and pathetic thing.”
According to the newspaper, “the fire started in the basement, presumably from where the old toilet places were being disinfected with fire.” Describing the loss of the school as “a serious calamity to Bridgeport borough (which officially became South Brownsville Borough less than a month later),” the newspaper predicted that “the school board will take prompt action towards replacing the structure which has been a school home for three generations.” It was suggested that the building’s successor would “doubtless” be only two stories high and that the walls of the newer section of the lost building might be used in constructing the replacement structure.
From the ashes of Bridgeport High School would rise Prospect Street School, which some of our readers attended and many other residents remember. Please join me here next week, when I will share the details of the amazingly fast construction of Prospect Street School, which opened its doors to students just six months and 10 days after Bridgeport High School was destroyed by fire.
Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201 or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, PA 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to editor Mark O’Keefe, 8-18 E. Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to begin mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com end
. All past articles are on the Web at a href=”http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/ http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/ end