Additional Architectural Description
The original High School Building is U shaped in plan, with gable center
block and hipped wings. Two stories in height, it is five bays deep. A
cupola caps the gabled block Architectural details include stone
quoining, flat arch lintels (with keystones at the first story), sills
and basement. Windows are 12 / 12 wood sash; the openings at the wings
are arched. Basement-level windows are square. Triple portal entrances
are located at each wing. They are defined by pediment surrounds,
garlanded panels, and an oculus window in the gable end.
The High School was enlarged by an L shaped 1959 addition to the east.
The addition is contemporary in style, of red brick with red aluminum
panels and steel windows.
Boundary Description & Related Structures
The High School faces north toward Lakeside Avenue and the Pompton Lakes
Post Office. It is bounded by a large parking lot that serves the
downtown commercial area to the west and by early twentieth-century
residential structures to the south and east.
Significance
Like Pompton Lakes Post Office that it faces, the High School is a good
example for the stylistic historicism favored for large-scale public
buildings during the 1930s.
The site is identified on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of the 1920s as
the site of the Pompton Silk Mills and the Pompton Valley Community
House, a social center with reception room, dance hall, and gymnasium.
The social center was originally constructed by DuPont as housing for
workers during World War I.
Prior to the construction of the Pompton Lakes High School, area
students were educated in Butler, New Jersey. With the erection of the
new building, students were attracted from Oakland, Wayne and Midland
Park.