Coman Hill School No. 3, 1921. Miss Cecelia McDonough and students.
The origin of our town's schools date to 1812. Since then the town of North Castle has constantly been shuffling its school buildings and districts. In 1812 the New York State Legislative passed a law instituting common(public) schools. It became mandatory for each town to have its own school, and North Castle established nine districts and built nine schools.
East Middle Patent School District kept the best records. A one-room school was built in 1813 on Round Hill Road in the Hamlet of Banksville. One hundred years later, the district built a new school adjacent to the older East Middle Patent school house. This new Middle Patent School had two rooms and housed grades one through eight. Only in 1965, after 152 years, did the East Middle Patent School finally close. After much planning in the mid 1980's, the school house was moved to its current location at the North Castle's Historical Society's Smiths Tavern complex.
Geraldine McCoy graduated from Plattsburg State Teacher's College and arrived to teach at the East Middle Patent school in 1916. She married the local postman and became Mrs. Lawrence Lanfair. Nearly 50 years later she retired and was recognized by declaring June 25, 1961 "Geraldine Lanfair Appreciation Day". The proclamation was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Supervisor James Caruso.
Coman Hill School's history dates back to 1813.
Cox Avenue School, 1920. Teacher Miss Webster and her students.
In 1917, the hamlet of Armonk had three separate districts with three schools. The Whippoorwill School, a one-room school on Whippoorwill Road East; the Webster School, named after a school teacher, Lillian Webster, another one-room school on Cox Avenue, just north of Route 22, near where St Patrick's Church is located; and the Armonk School, a two-room school on the north side of School Street.
At that time, school started at 9:00am and ended at 3:30pm. Children's ages ranged from 6 -16, with the older students acting as tutors to the younger ones.
The three smaller Armonk districts, merged in 1924 to become known Common School District No. 5 of the Towns of North Castle and New Castle.
The total enrollment of Armonk's School district 5 in 1955 was 3,117 students.
A new Whippoorwill School was rebuilt in 1924. The building on Whippoorwill Road East today is middle-income housing units.
Over the years Coman Hill School was transformed into four different buildings at different locations within the same general area. This might have been due to the school's location near valuable farm property, North Castle Farms, which later became Windmill Farm. Coman Hill was first built in 1813 on a small plot of land near where it exists today. By 1845 the first Coman Hill School was replaced by a larger one-room schoolhouse. This second building closed in 1915. A third Coman Hill school, a one-room stone building, was built in 1915 on Route 22, several hundred feet from the other Coman Hill School building. The school was closed in the 1940's and sold in 1969 as a private home. As the demands on the district grew in 1964, a new Coman Hill school was constructed one mile south of the prior Coman Hill Schools. In 1965 the current Coman Hill Elementary School opened on a 16 acre campus located on Route 22, with students in kindergarten through fifth grade. It now houses grades K - 2.
In 1951 the new Wampus School was built on 25 acres. Wampus School is currently the second elementary school, for grades three to six.
In 1954, the Pleasantville school district informed the Armonk School District that due to anticipated overcrowding, as of September 1956, Pleasantville High would no longer accept non-resident students for the ninth grade.
In preparation for this change, the North Castle Junior High was built in 1957 on 19 acres and opened to grades six through nine. Tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders were still going to Pleasantville. In 1961, H. C. Crittenden (Councilman's Becky Kittredge's Uncle) retired as principal and the school was renamed after him, as the H. C. Crittenden Middle School.
In July 1962, the Armonk, Middle Patent and Bear Ridge School Districts were centralized into one district becoming Byram Hills Central School District No. 1 with 1,522 students.
Due to a sharp decline in elementary enrollments, the Whippoorwill School closed in the Fall of 1972. Grades were reorganized so that elementary school was grades K-4, and middle school was grades 5 - 8.
Finally Byram Hills High School was opened in September 1966. It's 16 classrooms and accompanying athletic fields were built on 66 acres, and it opened its doors to 681 students in grades seven through eleven. Prior to this, North Castle's high school students always attended neighboring schools outside the district.
By 1967 the Byram Hills Central School District graduated its first class and completed its first K - 12 program with 1,910 students.
Just 43 years complete, the Byram Hills school district has a highly regarded reputation, with a 2009 - 2010 school year enrollment of 2,794.
Source: North Castle Historical Society, North Castle History and Byram Hills District, Know Your Byram Hills Schools. Thank you to Doris Finch Watson, North Castle's Town Historian, for the noted correction that East Middle Patent School was the one-room school
house and Middle Patent School was the two-room school house.
Home Again in Armonk
December 2, 2009 By Bonnie McGee
Graduates of the Class of 1993, Dr. Frank Contacessa and his wife Daria Tranquillo came back to Armonk to start a medical practice and a family. Frank is a board-certified internist with a medical degree from NY Medical College in Valhalla. He joined Dr. Donald Cohen’s practice at Orchard Drive, Armonk, in 2005. “We treat teenagers to adults. I began seeing Dr. Cohen when I was a teenager, and he always made me feel comfortable--his was the kind of practice I wanted to be part of.” Along with Dr. Peter Welsh, the three physicians helped found Westchester Health Associates in 2007. They maintain a personalized practice providing unusual levels of availability and access. “This is kind of a small-town customized medicine I grew up with.” Frank’s attachments here are more than professional. “My brother, parents and cousins are all here--that familiarity is very comforting.” Walking through town, he is well aware of the growth of the town since he was a child. “I like the changes—Armonk combines a small town quaintness with a modern cosmopolitan feel.” Frank and his wife are parents of a 14-month-old little girl. “We know she will be experiencing many of the same things her parents enjoyed while growing up in this town.”
Jack Moore of A. Moore Painting and Decorating began his business just after high school graduation in 1976. For more than 30 years, Jack has been serving Armonk and the surrounding area providing residential and commercial interior and exterior painting, as well as power washing and wallpaper application. “When you deal with someone who has grown up in your town, they share your values—there’s a sophistication and caring that comes with that.” Jack has vivid memories of the town the way it was, and recalls with fondness his stay in the now-demolished Wampus Lake Inn, his first home after moving out of his parents’ house. Jack’s parents were well-known figures in town. His father was town attorney for 20 years, and he describes his mom as a professional volunteer. “She was a member of everything, and that used to get me into a lot of places.” Despite Armonk’s many physical changes, it is still the town he loves. “I am reminded daily of what a wonderful place this is to grow up. It’s a great small town full of quality.”
Young BH Entrepreneurs To Open “Burger Factory”
Two young business savvy brothers, native sons of Armonk, are set to open the Burger Factory at 144 Bedford Road. Looking to accommodate families, Joshua (class of 2003) and Joel Elstein (class of 1999), have conceived a “kid friendly, playful environment,” complete with 3-D hamburgers flying off the walls, and after-school specials just right for snacking on the way home from school. From traditional hamburger and fries, to veggie or turkey burgers and salads there will be something for everyone. Josh says, “a great opportunity presented itself and we took it.” Great location, fun atmosphere and modestly priced offerings will be key to the success of the Elstein’s new venture. The brothers have been partners in the food business for fifteen years, starting with the creation of Diamond Affairs Catering, which offers high-end and celebrity clients an array of unique specialty items. Two years ago, they added to their businesses the Belfair Country Market, serving the Rye Brook area. Josh and Joel continue to make Armonk their home.
WesTech Solutions LLC founders, L to R, Danny Mitchell, Moises Valencia, Joe Huguenot, Tommy Boland & Doug Holdgrafer.
Byram Grads Form Tech Company
By Amanda Boyle
Many couples cite the strong school system as a number one reason for moving to Armonk. A good high school education leads to a good college education leads to a good job. Or at least that’s the plan. A kid needs to have some natural smarts as a base, and that’s certainly the case with Doug Holdgrafer, Tommy Boland, Danny Mitchell and Joe Huguenot, four graduates in the Byram Hills class of 2005.
These four, along with a fifth bright young man, Moises Valencia from New Rochelle, make up WesTech Solutions, LLC. Boland and Holdgrafer started off together in the Holdgrafer basement, running a server back when they were only thirteen years old. They’ve come a long way—with AP computer science at Byram and internships (Holdgrafer interned at MicroPoint, formerly of Mt. Kisco and now in Millwood) and jobs (Valencia was working at a Hedge Fund in Rye earlier this year when it folded) under their belt.
They are available and able to service anywhere from private residentials—they’re called for typical “break-fix” scenario: something breaks, they come over, find the problem, and fix it—to large companies. They offer a monitoring system, which can monitor hundreds of computers 24/7, and catch any problems before a user would have any idea there was one.
Some businesses are wary at their young age, but they have proved themselves worthy. They currently have 100 residential clients and 40 business clients. As Boland pointed out, “It makes sense, our generation is the technology generation.” This is the next generation of workers, and these five are certainly off to a great start, working hard at something they enjoy.
Click to learn more about WesTech Solutions and you can follow them on Twitter, or to contact them directly, by calling Doug at 914-595-6335.
Byram Hills 1966 - 67
By Chris Morris
"New Years" actually start just after Labor Day. And no September in Armonk history was bigger than the one two score and three years ago when BHHS opened. Though not quite a high school (as it had no senior class yet) it nevertheless boasted having "PIZAZZ" -- as audaciously coined in the commemorative buttons distributed when its 1966-67 inaugural school year trailblazed Byram's purple hills forever. Call it BHHS I; indeed aligned with Super Bowl I. And both -- like our country's own independence -- had launched experiments so huge that failure had never been an option. And yet the glamour and vitality of it all had rendered us more privileged than entitled. Not lost in hindsight -- for example, by 1966 -- had been LBJ's failure to parlay his earlier success to nationalize Civil Rights and, in turn, marginalize Vietnam and pending inflation. Only 9 years after Little Rock's desegregation and not yet subject to the [not so] Selective Service of the lotto'draft, our "High" seemed more prep school than public. Hence the "Pizazz!" And when then NY Governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, was helicoptered in to officially install us, nobody was disappointed. Only three years after he single-handedly honored his party's centennial celebration of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (indeed alongside Dr.King's "Dream" speech), yours truly was one elated student-council/8th-grader shaking hands with a great liberator who'd be Veep only three years after I graduated BHHS in 1971.
Had the zeigeist dramatically paired this active foreground with an expanding horizon, OR had Tripp Lane truly breached some great divide rendering all of it more accessible independently of time? And what of the radically modern spread itself? Was it a camera obscura whose double-convex lens didactically siphoned from Byram's surrounding Hills Mr.Urso's/social-studies Iroquois Nation, OR a camera lucida whose four-sided prism and magnifying glass had magically framed our futures? With never-before-seen outside/in "project rooms" (of reinforced glass), AND the inside/out trapezoidal trappings of the indentured fenestration, it had obviously been BOTH. No accident that Marcel Breuer's avant-garde Whitney Museum -- with similar apertures -- in NYC was just as new as BHHS.
That we were living/learning history both in -- and aspiring to -- the best of times, nostalgia would forever become both a longing for -- and synchronicity with -- healthier vicissitudes otherwise dormant in fast-rewind. John Lennon didn't mean any disrespect when, in 1966, he ranked his Beatles as being even "more popular than Jesus." After all, Walt Disney, the man who had manufactured nearly all of our dreams, had just died. And the greatest sports' franchise of ALL time, the NYYankees, had just finished in an unprecedented 10th place! So someone like John -- bespectacled in 'grannies" -- or, something like a new too-cool-for-school high school -- bespectacled in trapezoids -- had to enlist popular proof and passionate persuasion to empower the mind and imagination. Otherwise "California Dreamin" (Mamas and Papas) would be limited -- indeed lost on some ex-Hollywood-actor/future-U.S.Prez first becoming California's Governor in 1966 -- as we were "born ready" for an unmatched success straight from BHHS's clean slate.
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I am an Armonk Boomerang
My family moved to Armonk in the 1960s. Myself, my wife and our younger children moved back to Armonk in the 1990s. If one makes enough left hand turns, planned or otherwise, you end up in the same spot. I have ended up, once more, in the hamlet of Armonk.
Boomerang-like, I was a student at Byram Hills High School (BHHS) in the 1970s. After more decades than I readily admit to, I am parent of BHHS students for the past several years. I have that dual vantage, a historical and a contemporary vision.
Teachers are important; great instructors are life changing. Even as a taxpayer one can see that, and even as a youth that had thought they had seen it all, it is true. BHHS has long had a selection of certain teachers that rose above their peers and were superb. I tend to not compliment others too often as humans are easily spoiled I find.
Robert Dean, Class of 1989, is the owner of Naturescapes, a boutique landscaping and design firm and garden shop, located at 2 MacDonald Ave., Armonk. “Essentially, I never left Armonk,” said Robert. He lives right next door to the business with his wife Sue Allison, also a Byram Hills graduate. Robert began the business as a sideline in 1994, but by 2003 it had grown to a full-time occupation. Naturescapes serves residential and commercial clients offering a range of premiere quality landscape and hardscape installations from New York City roof gardens to country estate gardens. The level of design creativity and ability to broker rare and exotic specimens makes this landscaping business unique. As for the reason to come back to Armonk, “this location provides a perfectly suited base for reaching a broad clientele over a wide geographic area.” Robert and Sue share a passion for horticulture, offering customized plant and floral designs as permanent installations or for special events. More on Naturescapes can be found on the company website at www.nscapes.net.
BHHS Small Business Owner
Sandra Segatti Scarano knows all about the benefits of owning a small business in Armonk. After graduating from Byram Hills in 1976, Sandra came back to the community to open a local video store. She later helped out brother Andre (graduated 1977) with the family ceramic tile and marble business, now called Coastal Tile, also in Armonk. For the past ten years, Sandra has served the community as an ISSA certified personal trainer, working with a partner to “inspire people to become their best.” Working one on one in people’s homes, or meeting them at the Lexington Avenue Gym for workouts, Sandra finds just that right approach to getting people moving, whether their goal is general fitness, or preparing for a race. She finds working with cancer survivors particularly rewarding. For the past three years, Sandra has also been developing her real estate career as an agent for Prudential Holmes Kennedy in Armonk. Sandra’s two children, ages 14 and 17 are students at Byram Hills. “I came back to Armonk because the schools are fantastic and the friends I have met here feel like family. And it’s so beautiful.” Working locally and teaming with other women from the community have made Sandra’s professional life rewarding and successful. She can be reached for personal training at 914-646-9322, or email her at sanscar@optonline.net.
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Whoever said, “you can’t go home again,” didn’t grow up in Armonk. Within the town of North Castle, we currently have 44 Byram Hills graduates from 1971 to present who have “come home” to operate local businesses, raise their families and give back to their community.
Nick Gagliardi graduated from Byram Hills High School in 1982. He returned after college to start his family and pick up the reins of the family construction business started by his dad in 1952. Together with his brother Michael, Nick has grown Gagliardi and Sons Construction Co. into a successful “word-of-mouth” business serving the town of North Castle and all of northern Westchester. In addition to excavating and site work for residential and commercial construction, the company also provides septic systems. Another branch of the business is a wholesale nursery, located on Old Byram Lake Road.
Nick has four children in the Byram Hills schools, ranging in ages from 9 to 18. He coaches youth lacrosse, and has been serving his community as a volunteer firefighter for the past 15 years. Ask Nick, “Why come back to Armonk?” The answer is simple—“It’s an all out terrific community.”
Gagliardi and Sons Construction Co. LLC is located at 3 Barnard Road in Armonk and can be reached at 273-8088.
Know Your Byram Hills Schools
Byram Hills School District's office was located in this old home on King Street on IBM property.
