265

Caryl Keating.

Photo album of an early Montessori educator in the Lower East Side.

New York and elsewhere, circa 1917-1919
246 photographs mounted on 31 album leaves, with some captioning. Oblong 4to, 7 x 10 inches, original limp calf cover; minimal wear.

Maria Montessori began training teachers in her distinctive system in Italy in 1901; her methods were imported to the United States in 1912. Approximately 60,000 Montessori schools are in operation across the globe today.


Mary Carolyn "Caryl" Keating (1898-1972) was raised in an affluent Buffalo, NY family, and attended Columbia University. She also studied the Montessori method at the Child's Education Foundation Teaching School on West 74th St. The 1930 census shows that she was still teaching at a Montessori school in Manhattan.

Perhaps 20 of these photographs relate to Keating's Montessori training, her students, and the Lower East Side circa 1918, just a few years after the method was introduced to America. She taught Montessori classes at the Clark Neighborhood House on Rivington Street.  At least 18 of her students are shown, aged 3-5, most with Jewish names and one of them Italian. Other shots give a flavor of street life in the Lower East Side, such as shots titled "Push Carts in the Slums," "Pickle Vendor," and "Characteristic Figure, Russian Jew."  The album is tidily composed, although the captions can be enigmatic. One shot of a man shown rowing during a Greenwich, CT yacht vacation is captioned simply "The Bolshevist." 

With—3 other albums of similar size. Only one other album has much captioning; it shows Keating with friends and family, in Buffalo and on vacation circa 1914-1916. In one of the volumes, the leaves are neatly disbound. Also, a folder of correspondence, documents and loose photos, circa 1900-1961.

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