Artist's Sketch Looking Down South Street from Rice School – Whitman Bailey

A scene sketched by Whitman Bailey that no one will recognize anymore.

Complete Newspaper Clipping of July 9, 1927 (PDF)

Artist's Sketch Looking Down South Street from Rice School of July 9, 1927 depicts a truly bygone era.  What once was a tree lined residential street is now a busy thoroughfare called Washington Blvd.  Where Rice School (from the windows of which the sketch was taken) stood, there is now the UBS building.  The old State Street and Station Park at left and the residential area on the right called Rippowam Village have been swallowed up by the Connecticut Turnpike.

If you look closely at the center of the sketch, you can see the railroad overpass, and way back on the left  the spire of Holy Name Church next to the gas tank of the Stamford Gas and Electric Company.

Rice School is mentioned in an article on our website, Sarah Frances Smith and the Americanization Movement In Stamford, Connecticut in the 1920's, in connection with the adult evening education program for immigrants:

"The main Americanization school was the Rice School, near the railroad tracks and the South End. After a slow start, the number of immigrant adults who attended began to climb.  In 1926-27, 450 registered;  the following year, 606;  the year after, 689. On average, over 35% attended any given class."

Stamford residents can find related JSTOR articles on the Ferguson Library website (log in here) with the following titles:

The Americanization Movement
Howard C. Hill
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 6  (May, 1919), pp. 609-642

Americanization as an Early Twentieth-Century Adult Education Movement
Robert A. Carlson
History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 4  (Winter, 1970), pp. 440-464

Our research library has a vertical file on Rice School.

(Reference file Bailey218.jpg)

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