Harry Street School(s)

Harry Street School(s)

5/22/2024

by Brian Coll with previous research by Jack Coll

Recently Jack wrote an article for Conshystuff about the public clocks in our borough over the years. In that article we included a photo of the Hoffecker School. A few days late we posted a photo of the bell outside the Hoffecker School and showed where that bell sits today outside of Conshohocken Elementary School. Many people wondered where the Hoffecker School was and here is the answer.

In 1869, just 19 years after the Borough of Conshohocken was incorporated, a public school was built at the corner of 3rd and Harry Streets. It consisted of 3 buildings and according to the corner stone the main building was erected in 1869. The stone read:

3rd Avenue

Grammar School

1869

This school became known as the Harry Street School. It was later renamed in honor of Reuben Hoffecker who was the esteemed principle of the Harry Street School before moving on to become superintendent of all public schools in Montgomery County. He changed positions in 1878 and in 1922 they renamed the school The Hoffecker School. Reuben’s wife Clementine Stewart taught at the school as well.

In 1958 a new name came with a new school building. A devastating fire ripped through the Hoffecker School. Most of you won’t understand this or appreciate this, but Conshohocken was it’s own school district at the time. While there were a lot of students at the time, it was a public school, and the Conshohocken school system didn’t have the money to build a new school. Our community needed a hero, and we got one in Hervey S Walker. Hervey and his brother Newton also helped build the Conshohocken Fellowship House. The Walker Brothers were a community treasure. Of course Hervey S Walker Elementary School later became part of the Colonial School District. The mid 1980’s brought on a name change. Conshohocken Elementary was born. Not everyone loved the name change (me included) Hervey Walker invested in the youth of our community. The least we could do was continue to honor his memory. The new name may have been the least of our worries because in 1993 the Colonial School District wanted to close our elementary school. Our community fought to keep our school, a school that Conshohocken and some amazing men paid for. In the end, we got to keep our school. I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t mention Carol Ferst by name here. Of course an effort of this magnitude, took more than one person. Carol Ferst didn’t do this alone, but it seemed like she was the spearhead. Carol was involved with the school as an aide, heavily involved in the PTO and was an all around good person. Sadly we lost her in 1994 to cancer. She was only 41 years old. To all of my friends and Conshohocken parents who walk your children to school, the only school in the district in the heart of the community. You can thank Carol and the group of residents that stood up to the school district to keep our Conshohocken school. You can thank Carol for keeping your kids off a bus at a young age.

As its stands, Conshohocken Elementary is the oldest school in Conshohocken having students for the past 150 or so years under multiple names. If you are newer to the community, you might be thinking, well its the only school. And sadly, it is. We lost Conshohocken High School, yes we had our own high school until 1966. We also lost Saint Matthews, Saint Mary’s, Saint Cosmas and Damian, at some point those 3 Catholic grade schools merged to become Conshohocken Catholic and we lost that school in 2012. All of the Catholic schools fed into Archbishop Kennedy which closed in 1993. Technically it merged in Norristown and became Kennedy Kenrick, however if you asked students who attended that school it wasn’t as special as Archbishop Kennedy. I’m not counting the preschools in the borough or general community. These learning centers have their place, but for the sake of this article we are looking at the kindergarten and above learning levels.

We hope you enjoyed looking at a few schools that have been located at 3rd and Harry Streets. While we have you for a minute, a few upcoming or on going things in and around the borough.

The car show is coming up on June 1st. The local business group Discover Conshohocken is partnering with some young local entrepreneurs on June 8th for a lemonade sale around the borough. On July 14th, Conshystuff is proud to be partnering with the Reading Fighting Phillies for Conshy Night. We’ll have FREE Tickets to the game at Coll’s Custom Framing in mid June to pass out. And, while we are talking baseball…. our very own Conshohocken Baseball & Softball League is raising money to build a batting cage. They are looking for sponsors to help, the are offering pavers to be engraved with your name, your players names, an old favorite coach or even your local business. You can order your paver here:

Conshohocken Baseball & Softball League Buy A Brick Fundraiser

Thank you for reading.