Woodhull Property Once Eyed as Possible Junior High School Site

Today it’s home to more than 600 intermediate school students, but 55 years ago, the current Woodhull elementary school site was eyed as the possible location for a junior high school that a Huntington School District citizens committee knew would have to be built somewhere.

The Huntington School Board approved the report of the Junior High School Citizens Committee at its February 10, 1959 meeting.  The main recommendation of the committee was that “The voters of the district be requested to authorize a bond issue not to exceed $1.3 million to provide for the immediate complete renovation of Simpson High School for 750 students.”

Simpson, as Huntington High School was then known, was named after Robert L. Simpson, who served as principal of the high school from 1930 to 1950.  It was located on Main Street in Huntington in what is now town hall.  After the building was vacated on November 26, 1958 when the current Huntington High School opened, district officials readied a plan to convert it into a modern junior high school.

The committee report, which was published in a March 1959 school newsletter mailed to district residents, included a section on the land that would later become the grounds of Woodhull Elementary School.  The committee was established by the School Board in September 1958 to survey future junior high school requirements and to determine if Simpson High School “should be renovated in accordance with the Board’s 1953 recommendation or otherwise disposed of.”

According to the report: “Current enrollment in kindergarten and primary grades (children in being) coupled with the delay in approval and construction of the new high school have compressed the Junior High School construction program into a short period of time.  Based upon available data, there will be a definite need for occupancy in 1963 or 1964 of a third Junior High School in our District, with a capacity of 750 to 1000 students if we are to prevent overcrowding such as we now have in Toaz Junior High School.”

The committee recommended looking at the Woodhull site as a possible solution.  “The School District owns approximately 23 acres of undeveloped property south of the Village Green School.  This land (hereinafter referred to as the Woodhull site) was acquired in 1949 for about $700 per acre and is now tax exempt. With the addition of six acres to the south it would be a satisfactory site for the construction of a third Junior High School, or alternatively for an additional elementary school which will be required in the near future.”

The report also noted that even in 1959, undeveloped land was quickly disappearing in Huntington.  “In 1955 a former Citizens Committee considered ten available sites for a Senior High School (excluding Woodhull).  At the present time only three of these remain available in the district with sufficient acreage.”

The committee recommended “That no other use or disposal be made of the Woodhull site pending further study inasmuch as it appears to be a favorable site for location of the required third Junior High School or for another elementary school.”

What happened next now belongs to history.  Simpson was converted into a junior high school following voter approval of a bond to renovate and update the facility.  It reopened in 1961 as R.L. Simpson Junior High School and continued to operate through June 1976.  It was then closed and eventually sold to the Town of Huntington for use as its new town hall.   

Instead of building a third junior high school on the grounds of the Woodhull property, the district purchased a plot of land south of Rte. 25A on Greenlawn Road and erected a new school, naming after longtime administrator and then superintendent J. Taylor Finley.  It opened in 1965 and has even housed elementary grades. 

Nathaniel Woodhull Elementary School opened for the 1967-68 school year and initially housed kindergarten through sixth grades.  It absorbed students from the old Roosevelt Elementary School, which was demolished during the 1960’s urban renewal craze to make way for Huntington Elementary School, which has been renamed Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School.