Student Population Soars

Accession Number P75-54-N490g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,
Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Changing laws about child labor and the age of mandatory school attendance led to a student population boom in Baltimore's schools in the 1920s.  Students were met with a severe shortage of classroom space, buildings in terrible physical condition, and a slow municipal response to remedy the situation.  This image shows Nathaniel Ramsey School #96 at Smallwood and Ashton Streets in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, where the total enrollment in June of 1920 was 554.