The Patrick E. Bowe Nursery School Scrapbook

The Patrick E. Bowe Nursery School Scrapbook is a small collection of photographs displayed in twenty-two pages. The images are taken at various times from November 1935 to October 1938. The ages of the children range from 2 ½ to 4 years-of-age.

The Bowe School, built in 1924-1925, is located on Hampden Street in Chicopee, Massachusetts. It was built to relieve the congestion of the rapidly growing city and enable Chicopee to have a second more permanent school near the city’s center. The Bowe School was the first new elementary school built since 1910 and was considered very up to date for the time. It was set up as a voting precinct and had an assembly hall that was used for a variety of civic and social purposes. The school opened its doors on May 15, 1925 and in its first year had 689 students and 18 teachers. The first principal was Ms. Agnes Mulcahy.

The school was named after Patrick E. Bowe, a member of the school committee in Chicopee from 1888 to October, 1910. Bowe was born in Chicopee, went to school in the Chicopee schools and worked for the city up to 1889. He then became the clerk for the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee and then in 1904 opened and operated his own grocery store on the corner of West Street and Center Street until his death on October 9, 1910.