The John V.B. Wicoff School off Plainsboro Road may not be as large and prominent as the buildings housing High School North or other nearby schools in the WW-P district. But the fact is that the school played a vital role in the creation of Plainsboro as a township in 1919.
Plainsboro Township has requested permission from the WW-P school district to apply for a marker at Wicoff to commemorate the school’s history, board member Ellen Walsh reported at the September 28 meeting.
According to Joanne Lupica, Plainsboro’s recreation director, Middlesex County has a program through its Cultural and Heritage Commission called “Historical Markers.” The markers, which are placed in locations throughout the county, reflect various important locations to the county.
“I met with the mayor, and we talked about potential sites,” said Lupica. “One that the township wanted to propose was for Wicoff School because it captures a number of things: it captures obviously and important person in the community as well as the history of the town’s formation because of an issue related to education. Wicoff School was the building that was built as a result of the separation of Cranbury and Plainsboro.”
So why is Wicoff so important? Prior to 1919, the area in what is now Plainsboro fell under the auspices of the Cranbury Board of Education. But residents felt their needs were not being met. According to a narrative provided by the Plainsboro Historical Society to the Wicoff school, “it was a lack of an adequate school, which resulted in Plainsboro’s emergence as an independent township.”
According to the narrative, the people in Plainsboro requested that money, “allocated by the Cranbury Board of Education for a new school, be granted to meet Plainsboro’s needs, but the funds went elsewhere.”
The Plainsboro residents then petitioned the state to create a separate township in 1919 — and were successful. In its first year as a township, the residents went on to see the development of what is now the Wicoff school.
According to a local newspaper article from December 19, 1919, the building was 76 by 67 feet, “built of Princeton stone with limestone trim, and the front will be of Gothic architecture.”
“The realization of the new school is the result of a long fought battle on the part of the town’s citizens,” the article stated. The article described the residents’ battle to expand the facilities offered to children in the Plainsboro section of the township, which only had a two-room school building owned by the township.
According to information from the Historical Society, the two-room school house, which later served as Plainsboro’s library for many years, was estimated to have been built in 1908. Prior to that, school was held in one room of the adjacent Grange Hall and later in a separate one room school house.
After the two-room school house was built, the Grange Hall was again used to house the first and second grades, while the two-room school house was used for the third through fifth grades in one room, and sixth through eighth grades in another.
But eventually the facilities were not enough. “Local residents heard that their school was in poor condition,” stated a news article from 1952 published in the Daily Home News in New Brunswick. “As a result, a group of interested persons petitioned the Cranbury Board of Education for a two-room addition to the school.
The cost would have been $12,000. But $12,000 was more than Cranbury residents were willing to pay. They defeated the measure in the Board of Education election.”
The residents successfully petitioned to form their own township, forming a government with “no party politics,” according to one report, and later established a Board of Education, where John Van Buren Wicoff was a member.
A lifelong resident of Plainsboro, he was the chairman of the Plainsboro school board for 31 years and served on the Plainsboro Township Council for almost the same length of time, stated an article from 1975. Wicoff, the article states, was a senior member of the Trenton law firm of Wicoff and Landing and owned a 400-acre farm in Plainsboro.
The school was constructed in 1919 by the Matthews Construction Co. of Princeton. A 20,460-square foot addition was constructed, beginning in 1959 for $400,000. The project added six classrooms, administrative and nurse’s offices, kitchen and cafeteria facilities, combined gymnasium and auditorium facilities, and locker rooms, as well as a new heating and ventilating system to the existing four classroom school, according to a request for proposals from the school district, dated April, 1959.
In order to honor the board’s long-time chairman, the Plainsboro Township Council recommended to township committee in 1975 that the school name be changed to John V.B. Wicoff School.
If the township applies for the marker and is selected, the process could take up to six months. But if it is successful, Plainsboro will not only have a historic marker, but Wicoff students can benefit from it. Plans are to incorporate officials’ “desire to work with the current staff and students to come up with the language because then it would be a little history project for them,” said Lupica.
But whether the application for the historic marker is made and the project is granted remains to be seen. “At this point, it’s very preliminary,” said Lupica.
