It was no accident that Phil Yourish was wearing a bright orange shirt under his brown blazer. These are the colors of Weequahic High School where Yourish graduated in 1964. “I wear this anytime I go to a Weequahic event,” said Yourish, executive director of Newark Landmark.
This wasn’t just any event. He had gathered the board members of his organization and other notables in the school’s auditorium last October to announce that his alma mater had just been listed on the National Register after a 13-year effort.
The nomination is a win, not only for Newark Landmarks, but for the city, where preservation efforts have often been foiled by city politics. This is the fourth city school to gain the nation’s highest landmark designation, the others being Eighteenth Avenue School, State Street School, and Maple Avenue School. This ongoing campaign to landmark local schools is vital in a place that has seen large-scale decimation of historic architecture due urban renewal, neglect, the aftermath of riots, and indifference. In 2022, Newark’s first historic district was listed on Preservation New Jersey’s most endangered places list.
The National Register designation offers a chance to honor the students who once made the school one of the best in the nation during the Yourish’s era. Other notable graduates include Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth, former Lieutenant Governor Sheila Oliver, and NBA coach Al Attles.
“If we didn’t have this magnificent building that can stand on its own as a landmark, we would have to invent something to pay tribute to the alumni of Weequahic,” said Del Tufo, president of Newark Landmarks. “People that made their mark in the world and people that made Newark a better place and made us proud of them.”
Del Tufo’s remarks reminded me of the sort of promises developers make when they come to land-use boards with the plans to tear down historic buildings and vow to put up a mural or plaque in its place — as if that were a commensurate tradeoff. This is what NJPAC promised to the residents of Newark when they revealed plans to demolish the Cathedral House on Rector Street. Fortunately, the local Landmarks & Historic Preservation Commission resisted and won. What more worthy monument of the history that played out there than the building itself.
In the case of Weequahic, the building is a monument to a time when Newark’s public schools were among the top in the nation. In 1933, the year it opened, there were 2,000 students. Gail Mack Hunter, a trustee of the Weequahic High School Alumni Association, remembered that there were so many students in 1971, when she graduated, that administrators decided to stagger the start times of students.
“I was just reimagining myself being on that stage,” said Hunter, who used to act in plays as a student.
The situation today is quite different. Attendance had dwindled to fewer than 300 students when Kyle Thomas, the school’s current principal, took the reins. The city’s open enrollment system has syphoned away the top students to magnet schools and created an imbalance in the remaining public school populations. One of Thomas’s expectations was to recruit new students. So far he has doubled that amount and brought down rates of alarming absenteeism that have plagued the school district. There is still more work to be done, Thomas said.
“The goal is to get the school back to 1,000,” said Thomas, whose father, Gerald, graduated from the school.
The unknown about the landmark designation is whether it can somehow help Weequahic High School in its quest to improve academics. Can reminding students of its past excellence somehow encourage them to achieve great things?
“It may,” said Mary Brown Dawson, an alumni association trustee. “But I think a good education will help that.”
“I hope it does,” Yourish said. “We have to sit down with the principal and talk about that.”
This is where the missions of the school district and preservationists intertwine. Perhaps what will determine not only the fate of the high school but also the cause of preservation is if their combined efforts can get others, especially young people, to care about the past.
“It’s not that the kids don’t care, they don’t know, and if they know the history, they embrace it,” said Marion Bolden, who is a former superintendent of Newark’s public schools and founded the Newark Public Schools Historic Preservation Committee. “We have to make them aware of how important it is – but the third oldest city in America hasn’t done a good job.”
Bolden, whose committee keeps a trove of artifacts that could fill a museum, has been an advocate of creating a curriculum that teaches local history, including State Street School, where James Baxter, became the city’s first Black principal.
One thing is certain – a listing on the National Register can bring in state and federal funds. Newark Landmarks already has its sights set on restoring the school's famous Works Progress Administration mural – Michael Lenson’s “Enlightenment of Man,” painted in 1939 – that would have otherwise fallen on the shoulders of the school district to repair.
The school’s architect, James Betelle, believed that although building school’s costly, doing so was worthwhile because they created productive citizens. “It has been well said that the larger the school, the smaller the prison,” Betelle told the Newark News in 1930.
The designation has also inspired people to donate to Newark Landmark’s cause. When the program inside the auditorium had ended, Yourish, seated in one of the auditorium's small wooden chairs, received an envelope from the organization’s treasurer. It was a donation from a trustee of the alumni association, Robert Singer, class of 1961. After opening it and seeing the amount, the look on Yourish’s face became almost incredulous.
“That’s the biggest donation we’ve had in awhile,” Yourish said.