It must have been quite an experience. The anticipation during their senior year must have been quite exhilarating as a group of rural American kids planned for a trip to big cities for what may well have been for some of them the experience of a lifetime.
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School District’s Senior class was going on a big-city trip some 400 miles south.
This all doesn’t sound like such a big deal in our America in this time but, for up to 100 years ago, it WAS a big deal. And all experienced by young people from the Burnt Hills and Ballston Lake communities in Saratoga County, NY, all seniors at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School (BHBL).
It all started in 1927. The inaugural trip. It was actually in March, 1926 that the junior class started making plans to take a trip to Washington DC as a class. There were approximately 40 people in the senior class that year but, in the end, according to one of the local newspapers, only 7 students participated in the trip.
But, it started a tradition in the school district and, for the next 14 years, every spring, the Senior class took a train trip to our capital city with numerous stops at other cities along the way and on the way home.
The tradition ended in 1940 with the lead up to the United States entrance into World War II. Our country’s actual declaration of war occurred the next year, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Was this unusual? Was it uncommon for rural young people to make trips such as this as part of their school’s program? How widespread was this activity is a question with an answer that is uncertain but the Ballston Spa School District had started a trip such as this, also during their spring break, back in 1912.
Whether it continued every year after that is also uncertain but that trip was going strong from the mid 1920s to the start of war, very similarly to the years BHBL was doing it. And, for Ballston Spa, it seems to have come back after the war, from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Other school districts in the greater Capital Region area were doing trips like this as well, including South New Berlin in the Catskills.
It seems that the itineraries were not always exactly the same year after year but the local newspaper, The Saratogian, printed a detailed itinerary of the 1928 trip, the second in the series of many BHBL trips.
The 19 students and their chaperon, teacher Margaret Ray, left the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake area in the afternoon of April 6 and arrived in Washington DC at 6:30 am on April 7 where they immediately went to the Arlington Hotel. I wonder how many of the students had even been in a hotel before?
The original Arlington Hotel was exclusive and very swanky, but it had been torn down by the time BHBL seniors visited Washington that year. The new Arlington Hotel was less exclusive but was known for its rooftop nightclub and cafe, which I doubt was visited by the students — or was it???
Saturday’s tours were many and highlighted by Mount Vernon, Masonic sites, Arlington Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown, and the National Cathedral. Sunday, Easter Day, included church at the President’s church or St. Patrick’s Cathedral and lunch back at the hotel. The evening included attendance at a 19th century Black Baptist church.
Monday’s itinerary typically included a visit to the White House and maybe even a reception with the President; the Red Cross building; the DAR; and the Congressional Library. Tuesday: the Botanical Gardens, the Navy Yard and the Capitol and the Supreme Court as well as the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, and various other monuments.
And Wednesday, the last day in Washington, visits were made to the Treasury Building and included a bus tour of the city. A very ambitious agenda for anyone, much less restless teenagers.
Then came Baltimore with a sightseeing tour through the residential sections of the city and visits to a number of the colleges there. On to Philadelphia and the Walton Hotel which featured a ladies’ restaurant, a gentlemen’s cafe, several parlors, a banquet hall, and 400 guest rooms, 200 of which had separate baths. That evening, the group attended a dance at the hotel. Overall, it must have been quite an experience.
In Philadelphia over the next day, there were trips to Fairmount Park where the country’s sesquicentennial (150 years) of 1926, just two years before, had been held as well as Independence Hall, Betsy Ross’ house, and Benjamin Franklin’s grave.
Finally, after a two hour train ride from Philadelphia, the group arrived in New York where they experienced an elevated train ride, Battery Park, the Aquarium, old Trinity Church, and a tour of an old steamship. Columbia University and Central Park rounded out the visit to New York the next day
The April 5, 1928 Saratogian reported about the planned end of the trip: “After dinner at 7 o’clock the evening will be free until 11:45 o’clock; one hour before the party is to leave the Grand Central terminal in Pullmans [sleeper railroad cars]. The entire cost of the trip is $59.”
In other years, other sites were visited as well. The Naval Academy at Annapolis, boat rides on the Chesapeake Bay, various churches in Washington, the Washington Zoo, and Colonial Williamsburg, among others. In 1940, the last trip before the war, 25 of 29 seniors participated.
To afford it all there were numerous fundraisers for different classes throughout the years. The class of 1930 filled the gym at the school while people watched their “circus:” animal acts, a Clown Band which included students from the local Charlton School, boxers from Father Hogan’s local boxing school, and a Hall of Horrors Freak Show.
Attendees feasted on Eskimo Pies, candy, and popcorn. The class realized a profit of $150 from the event, all to be used to offset expenses for the Washington trip.
The class of 1938 held numerous fund-raising events throughout their senior year: the senior play, dances, the Burnt Hills fireman’s annual banquet, a dart baseball league (two years before, the 1936 senior class had served dinner at the dart league dinner and made the front page of the Ballston Spa Daily Journal), a faculty play, and a magical-musical show put on by two faculty members. All these events defrayed about 65% of the cost of their trip that spring.
One hundred years ago high school seniors certainly got a taste of the world beyond their own.
Rick Reynolds has been the Ballston Town Historian since 2004. He is a retired social studies teacher at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Middle school and is the author of the book From Wilderness to Community: The Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School District.
This essay is presented by the Saratoga County History Roundtable and the Saratoga County History Center. Follow them on Twitter and Facebook.
Photo: BHBL Senior Class in Washington DC, 1940.
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