A SHORT HISTORY OF SIMON BARUCH MIDDLE SCHOOL
Middle School 104 began life in 1954 as a junior high school, for grades 7, 8 and 9 on the grounds of the defunct Women's Lying-In Hospital. We serve the Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper, Gramercy Park, Turtle Bay and Murray Hill communities. Our geographic catchments area extended from 14th Street to 571 Street and from The East River to Fifth Avenue. Our feeder schools were PS 40, PS 116, PS 3, PS 59, and PS 26 on Governor's Island.
In 1996 District 02 converted Simon Baruch to a middle school for grades 6, 7 and 8 and in 1999 our zone expanded to include Chelsea and Battery Park, adding feeder schools PS 11, PS 41, and PS 234.
We see the differences between the two models as follows:
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
subject centered
subject isolation
departmentalization
set curriculum
guidance counselor
mini-high school
| MIDDLE SCHOOL
student centered
interdisciplinary
blocks of time
curriculum plus enrichment
advisories plus guidance
individual identity
|
And who was Simon Baruch anyway?Simon Baruch, the father of the financier Bernard Baruch, was born in Poland in 1840. He came to the United States in 1855, studied medicine and graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 1962 and became a surgeon in the Army of the Confederacy. He moved to New York City in 188l.
Dr. Simon Baruch's work centered on two critical areas of public health, the establishment of public bath facilities in New York City, and empirical studies on the real benefits of mineral springs in Saratoga, New York.
At the turn of the twentieth century, many private homes and most tenements in NYC did not have running water. Contagious diseases were rampant, and among the poor, mortality was high. Dr. Baruch championed and lobbied for the construction of and wide use of public baths to benefit the residents of this congested immigrant city. The first public baths in the country were opened in 1901 on Rivington Street in lower Manhattan.
In her book, SIMON BARUCH: REBEL IN THE RANKS OF MEDICINE, Patricia Ward says that Baruch became known as the apostle of cleanliness for his promotion of shower baths for the urban poor. He became aware of the inability of the poor to bathe themselves when he served as a dispensary physician in one of New York's most notorious slums.
Simon Baruch also performed extensive studies of the medicinal benefits of mineral springs. In many parts of the world, the locations of hot springs and mineral springs were kept very secret. Dr. Baruch's theory was that such springs must have had real benefits, and he began his studies at the Springs at Saratoga, NY. Baruch believed that the beneficial physiological effects of water treatments could be established on a rational, scientific basis, and he wrote several books on the subject; he gained a reputation for his promotion of hydrotherapy.