Carmel High School

Principals

As the district consolidated, the position of principal at Carmel gradually separated from that of supervising principal of the district, which, in the 1960s, became superintendent of the district after the abolition of county superintendent of schools. Until the 1960s the district was based in Carmel High School.

Robert Kristeller (died 2002) was the last supervising principal and first superintendent. He took charge in 1943, the year collecting high school newspaper clippings in the library began. He retired in 1970. The school's football field is named in his honor.

Joseph Z. Dawson, who became vice principal in 1948, took over as principal in 1954. He became Superintendent in 1973 after Kristeller's second successor, Richard R. Meehan, died.

David D. Odell succeeded Dawson, on an acting basis in the 1973–74 school year and officially the following year, but in 1975 returned for personal reasons to the less stressful job of assistant principal.

John F. McGuckin, a former mayor of Toms River, New Jersey, served as principal from 1975 to 1978.

F. James MacDonald, who returned to serving the Carmel district as a member of the board of education in the twenty-first century, succeeded McGuckin.

Diana Bowers succeeded MacDonald.

Kevin Carroll succeeded Diana Bowers.

26-year veteran teacher Louis Riolo succeeded Kevin Carroll in 2014 upon Carroll's retirement after 14 years as principal and five years assistant principal at Carmel High School. At the end of Carroll's career, he was named regional administrator of the year.

Carmel High School's history traces back to the one-room schoolhouses that once dotted the towns of Carmel, Kent, and Patterson, descending most directly from Carmel School District Number 7, which served the hamlet of Carmel proper.

Previous buildings

In 1853, Carmel District Number 7 obtained the two-room building of a private school that closed on the shore of Lake Gleneida. This structure was used until 1893 when the City of New York claimed the lake shore (the lake being part of its reservoir system) and obliged all structures on that side of Gleneida Avenue (Carmel's "Main Street", today one end of New York State Route 52) to be moved or demolished. Some buildings were moved across the street on rollers, but the schoolhouse was moved down nearby Brewster Avenue (today part of U.S. Route 6), and two additional rooms were built under it.

Both growth (additions to the building in 1899 and 1918) and accreditation (as a union school in June 1899, a middle school in October 1900, a senior school in January 1904, and finally as a high school in June 1906) followed as neighboring districts consolidated. The district became Union Free School District Number Ten. The school continued to serve grades 1–12. The first annual commencement was held June 22, 1908, at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church, according to an invitation reproduced in the 1899–1999 alumni directory. The centennial of this was commemorated in 2008, though the school had existed before 1908, and the present building's 75th anniversary had been celebrated as a school anniversary in 2004.

In 1924, a fire devastated much of Carmel's business district, destroying, among other buildings, the hotel Smalley's Inn (which survives today as a restaurant) and the headquarters of Putnam County National Bank (which built a new stone main office). The entirely wooden schoolhouse was felt to be unsafe. Arrangements were made for a new, fire resistant school to be constructed in 1929 at a cost of $250,000.

The present building

The present building was constructed on Fair Street, which meets Route 52/Gleneida Avenue near the site of the 1924 fire (and later the 1974 fire). The site was adjacent to what was the Putnam County Fairgrounds (now included in the current campus). The school moved over the Easter vacation of 1930.

The oldest section of the building gives the school its address, 30 Fair Street. This main door facing the street was only for faculty and members of the senior class, all younger students being obliged to enter by one of the doors at the two sides of the building, marked "Boys" on the left and "Girls" on the right (the latter remains but the former was removed in the most recent addition).

The red brick and concrete motif of this construction was continued in all of the numerous later additions to the school.

By 1936, Union Free School District Number Ten had become Carmel Central School District Number 2 according to the plaque on a new addition constructed by the Public Works Administration. The district would not shed the Number 2 until the 1970s when Carmel Central School District Number 1 formally became the Mahopac School District.

Not only had small, nearby districts continued to consolidate, a process that wasn't finished until the 1950s, but kindergarten was added as the grade 1–12 school became a K-12 school.

The new addition extended back from the roofline of the original part of the building, but as it extended downhill it had a lower floor. The school also began the tradition that the library would be relocated each time the main building was added to. The original library became a classroom, the librarian's office a department office. The new library in the rear wing later became two classrooms, the adjoining librarian's office another department office, but wooden doors with lettering designating their original purpose were still there in the 1970s. Also included were a gymnasium and workshop.

A separate one-story building was constructed in 1950 that took some of the lower-grade students. Over the years its purpose changed, thus in the 1970s it was the English annex, and after the 1980 addition, it succeeded a converted garage next door (which reverted to its original purpose) as the music annex.