Academy Court

A nice side trip is to turn onto Academy Avenue. On the north side of the street, tucked behind the Methodist Church school building, is the Pennington Academy building, built in 1899, expanded in 1906, and now part of the Academy Court condominiums. Across the street is the predecessor school, now the First Baptist Church, constructed in 1857 and moved to this location in 1898. The Baptists were the fifth religious congregation to organize in Pennington. The intersecting street, Crawley St., named after the Baptist first minister, was developed at the turn of the century by the church's congregants and includes an interesting group of Homestead and Colonial Revival style houses.

When we moved to Pennington, around the early 1960s, this was a school for grade 1 to grade 3. In the spring, the kids would give a little show, outside on the lawn, for the parents. The grand finale was when the children would surround a large sik parachute. They would shake the parachute causing it to ripple above the ground, until the paragraph would rise high enough for all the children to hide underneath the paragraph. Life was a lot simpler back then.

Around the early 1970s, the children were transferred to the Grammer School on Main Street. The building was used for a while by the Board of Education. Later, when the Toll Gate High School was closed, the Board moved to Toll Gate, now called the Administration Building. The building was renovated to become the Academy Court condomimiums. After a few more years, additional condos were added along Burd Street.