On this day in 1922, the following story was featured on the front page of the Columbia Republican, above the fold, right under the masthead.
The school to be built, of course, was Charles Williams School, now the Second Ward Foundation. The school was constructed in 1924 and officially opened in September of that year.
The playground facilities celebrated in this account--"a large tract big enough for two baseball fields and places for all sports"--is now Charles Williams Park. The enthusiasm for this site as an "excellent playground" for the school and for this part of the city suggests that in 1922 it was much easier to get from the end of Third Street down to what is now Charles Williams Park. Margaret Schram's excellent research about Lake Albany clay, published in 1988 in The Independent, in a series of articles called "Columbia County's Sleeping Dragon," suggests why. Sometime between 1924, when the school was completed, and 1988, when Schram did her research, it seems there was a landslide at that location, which may have had the effect of making the slope steeper.
COPYRIGHT 2022 CAROLE OSTERINK
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