Oak Lane Day School (originally known as Oak Lane Country Day School) was established in 1916 by a group of parents and for nearly 50 years was located on White Road (now known as Oak Lane Road) in Cheltenham Township before relocating to Blue Bell in 1965.
Several notable people graduated from Oak Lane, including Noam Chomsky (longtime Ivy League professor of linguistics), Ilana Davidson (a Grammy Award-winning soprano), and actor Ezra Stone.
John Dewey, one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century, served on the board.
According to various sources, the preschool slash elementary school’s curriculum was based on the philosophy of the Progressive Education Movement which Dewey is widely considered to have founded. The Oak Lane catalog of 1924 stated that the school “is a protest against a system of education which apparently considers that children can be properly educated by factory methods” and that the school “is not experimental, but accepts and puts into practice the principles established by those working in the field of educational psychology.”
In 1931, the school was renamed Oak Lane Country Day School of Temple University following a merger. In June 1960, the university determined that it could no longer support the school because of mounting debt and other issues, and the property was sold to a developer.
The school became incorporated as Oak Lane Day School and reconvened in the fall in the closed Glenside School building at Springhouse Lane and Easton Road in Glenside. In 1965, the school relocated to Blue Bell (Whitpain Township) where it operated until 2010.
A Temple University photo archive includes dozens of photos and a historical description of the school.
Below are photos of the school’s buildings and grounds:
Below are students celebrating May Day (circa 1935-1937):
Miscellaneous photos of Oak Lane students:
From Temple University’s historical description:
Oak Lane Country Day School, originally located on White Road (now Oak Lane Road) in Cheltenham Township, was founded in 1916 by a group of parents as a preschool and elementary school. The school’s curriculum was based on the philosophy of the Progressive Education Movement, which endeavored to support a student body that was racially, religiously and economically diverse. In 1931, Oak Lane began having financial difficulties and merged with Temple University to become Oak Lane Country Day School of Temple University. In 1927, Boris Blai was hired as the art teacher and continued there until 1935 when he left to create the Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art at Temple University. The school continued under the university until 1960, at which point Temple decided it could no longer afford to sustain it. It moved, temporarily, to an empty school building in Glenside. In 1963, the school purchased the 30-acre Cadwalader estate in Blue Bell. By 1965, they had moved into their new building and changed their name to Oak Lane Day School. The school remained there until its closure in 2010.
For more nostalgia, you can check out the school’s Facebook group.
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Photos: Temple University Archives | Feature photo: Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, August 31, 1921