Most students here at Stevens know the boxy, brick, monotonous building known as Burchard Building. However, not many students know that before Burchard was built in the late 1950s, a very different-looking building sat where Burchard is today. This building, known as Recitation Hall, was home to a gem of Stevens’ history that remains outside the interest of most of the Stevens community. In 1870, the same year the university was founded, another institution with the Stevens family name was established: Stevens High School, later known as the Stevens School.
In 1870, the Board of Trustees assumed control of a local Hoboken school, which had received gifts from Edwin A. Stevens before his death. Rev. Edward Wall, a professor at the university, was appointed to lead the new school, which was renamed the Stevens High School. The school was created to prepare local students to apply and attend the university. It offered a unique and challenging curriculum in math and natural science. For two and a half years, the school remained in its original building before being relocated to Edwin A. Stevens Hall. It was renamed to the Stevens School to avoid confusion with the local school system. The school remained there at Edwin A. Stevens Hall for 18 years. To accommodate for an expected continued growth in population, the university decided to build a new home for the Stevens School in 1888.
The new building of the Stevens School, also known as the Recitation Hall, was built in 1888 between Hudson and River streets from 5th to 6th Street. The building is 86 feet by 69 feet with a basement and three stories. The basement included high-vaulted ceilings to house the recreation room, gymnasium, and boiler room. The first floor included four classrooms with coat rooms, the principal’s office, and a library. The second floor housed a more spacious room used for lectures of modern language seminars and four normal-sized classrooms. The third floor included two more standard classrooms, a lecture hall, and a physics laboratory.
Architecturally, the building was made of varying types of stone and brick, including Trenton stone on the lower levels and Philadelphia stretcher bricks with red mortar higher up. The front of the building also included terracotta, brick, and Trenton stone for the window sills and cornices. The interior floors were made of sand-mortar with hard pine wood placed on top. The ceilings were close-plastered wood and the roof slate. This type of design allowed the building to be nearly entirely fire-proof.
The Stevens School moved out of the Recitation Hall in about 1917, at which point it was refitted for college use. It remained there until 1959 when it was demolished for the construction of the Burchard Building. So if any students end up bored in a lecture in Burchard, remember you are sitting in the same spot where high schoolers would have played basketball over 100 years ago.
