HAPPY VALLEY SCHOOL: A History and Remembrance

Happy Valley School was an outgrowth of the work of The Five Point House, a private charitable foundation organized in 1850 to relieve the distressed conditions of an area in New York City known as the “Five Point District.” It was a country home school for boys and girls in the first through the eighth grades, from six to eighteen years of age. It was dedicated to the service of children whose homes had been broken or who would benefit from school experience in homelike surroundings. Happy Valley was truly integrated. Black, White, Hispanic, Jew and Arab slept side by side, ate, played and worked together. The common denominator was family dysfunction; neglect, abuse and poverty had brought them all together. Although they had house-parents around, the warmth, camaraderie and interaction was with one’s peers. Children fought, made friends and felt the first pangs of adolescent love with their peers. Discussions include: The New Mission House of the Five Points, Claude Boorum and the Happy Valley Colony, Edwin Gould: A Friend of Happy Valley and a Titan of Philanthropy to Children, History and Purpose, Sports and Recreation, Health, The American Female Guardian Society and the Home for the Friendless, Institution Chronology, Alumni of Pomona’s Happy Valley School Reunite as School is Torn Down, transcript of an article about Happy Valley School: “Happy are the Memories,” George Cosmos (a Former Happy Valley Alumni) Fills Us in on the 1930’s and the 1940’s, Board of Trustees and Other Members, School Life, Religious Life, The Minisceongo Golf Club: Friends Golf on the Site of a Former Children’s Home, Data Retrieval Investigations of a Multi-Component Site at the Minisceongo Golf Course (Ramapo, New York) with a history of investigations and detailed site description, Stage III Investigations, and Research Potential. A wealth of facsimile reprints of photos enhance the text.