100 Year Old Photo Album Reveals Details of Montclair Student Life in 1917-18

Montclair State’s Alumni Engagement Office recently sent the Sprague Library Archives pages from a 1917-1918 photo album. The pages offer a wonderful glimpse into life at Montclair State over 100 years ago.

We don’t know the name of the student who created the photo album, but it appears to be a student who lived in Russ Hall since there are images of a dorm room, the dining and living rooms and the Russ Hall Christmas party. Opened in 1915, Russ Hall was the first dormitory on campus. Edward Russ was a great benefactor of the New Jersey State Normal School at Montclair (as Montclair State was known at the time). Russ was the chairperson of the New Jersey Board of Education’s building committee. He admired the Spanish missions that he had seen on a trip to California, so College/Cole Hall and Russ Hall were built in that style. 

Both students and faculty appear in the photographs. Alongside Mabel Smith (who taught penmanship and mathematics), we see Hygiene teacher Miss Curtis and Florence Stryker who taught History. Most noteworthy is Professor John C. Stone, head of the Mathematics Department. Stone Hall was named in Professor Stone’s honor. He was a prolific publisher of mathematics textbooks. It is estimated that one of every five schoolchildren in the United States was using math textbooks that Stone had written by the time he retired in 1934. Copies of Professor Stone’s textbooks can be found in Sprague Library’s Special Collections.

To view all of the images, visit: https://montclair.libguides.com/archives/archivehighlights