A Quick History of Boulder Day Nursery
The
Boulder Day Nursery Association was organized in 1917 by the Woman's
Club of Boulder Civic Committee in response to the needs of Boulder's
single and working women. In April of 1917, the US declared war on
Germany and entered World War I. During that summer and fall men from
Boulder County started leaving for Europe and many women started
working to support the war effort or to replace income from husbands
that were overseas or killed in action. The women of the Civic Committee
took turns volunteering to supervise children in their homes but they
quickly realized that there was a huge demand for the service. At that
time, there was really no such thing as childcare in Colorado because
women with children were married and married women stayed at home to
care for their children, so these volunteers were a working parent's
only option. Within a year, the demand for the service
outstripped the volunteer's ability to provide care and the Boulder Day
Nursery Association became Boulder's first child care center. The Association
was originally made up of fifteen members from the Woman's
Club Civic Committee, as well as additional representatives from most
of Boulder's churches and fraternal organizations.
During
that spring, 26 men and women contributed $10 each to cover the cost of
renting a building and paying for utilities and food in a permanent
location at 1321 Walnut Street as well as hiring a matron to supervise
the children and volunteer staff. The rent was $25 per month and the
matron's monthly salary was $30. Fees for care were ten cents per day
for regular care, and ten cents per hour drop-in care. The Civic Committee further
funded the Association by conducting dances at Sternberg Hall and
Temple Hall, both located on the 1400 block of Pearl Street. Later, to
provide for more playground space, the nursery moved to 1605 Walnut.
Funding was donated by Boulder's McKenna family to provide for swings,
slides and merry-go-rounds. During the next few years attendance at the
Day Nursery grew and with this increase came additional expenses and it
looked as though the nursery would have to close the facility for lack
of funds, but concerned citizens and local organizations came to the
rescue. In-kind goods and services came from many individuals and
groups. Milk bottles were placed in the County Clerks office, movie
theatre lobbies, the Telephone Company building and the Marshall and
Vaniman cafeterias. Receipts from the bottles, as well as generous
donations from groups like the Lions and area churches paid for the
Nursery's expenses. During 1922, in addition to the overwhelming
grass-roots support, Boulder Day Nursery began to receive support from
the Community Chest (predecessor to the United Fund and Foothills
United Way). The public sector was also an early contributor, with the
city helping cover operting funds starting in 1919 and Boulder County
starting in 1922.
By 1929
the Association recognized that we needed a larger building and more
playground space. In 1911, Hannah Barker presented a plot of land
(formerly used as a livery stable since Boulder's incorporation as a
city) between 15th and 16th and Spruce and Pearl Streets to the city
for use as a park. On May 21st, at the request of the Association and
the Lions Club, the Boulder City Council voted to lease Barker Park to the Association.
Architect glen Huntington drew the plans for the new building, and ground was broken the following month. The Association, the Lions Club of Boulder and William and John McKenna provided the funds for construction. The groundbreaking ceremony was on Thanksgiving Day in 1929 and on January 5, 1930, the Lions Club sponsored a cornerstone ceremony. Louis Herman (Chair of the Lions Day Nursery building fund committee) held up the box which was to be placed in the cornerstone and placed the contents in it. Contents of the box included news articles about the Nursery, copies of the speeches given during the ceremony, histories of the Association and the Lions Club and copies of the charters for the Association, the Lions Club, and the city of Boulder.
The
building was completed in the Spring of 1930. The final cost of
building the new facility was just over $10,000. The first matron of
the newly constructed building, Jennie Drennon, lived in a modified
apartment on the second floor, which shared space with what was labeled
on the original floor plans as the "Boy's Workroom". The second floor
was later converted to offices but the structure remained essentially
unchanged until 1969 when a pre-school addition was built on to the
southern end of the building.
In March 1970 then First
Lady Pat Nixon toured Boulder Day during a national tour of early
childhood education leaders. At that time the country was involved in
the Vietnam War, and the University of Colorado Student Mobilization
Committee demonstrated its opposition to the War. Over one hundred
anti-war protesters stood peacefully outside the nursery during the
First Lady's visit. Local reporters and members of the White House
press corps covering the story asked several of the children for their
comments about the First Lady and the protesters. One young boy
commented that "The hippies don't want her here." Despite the protests,
Mrs. Nixon had a pleasant day with the children and staff.
During the mid-1970's, the idealism of providing sliding scale, high quality child care clashed with the generally dysfunctional economics of child care. Teachers became increasingly hard to recruit and retain due to the low wages the center was able to pay with its relatively low revenue. Through a co-operative effort between teachers and administration, Boulder Day Nursery was the first child care center in Colorado to become unionized. Although the center's teachers are not currently unionized, we have continued to maintain our efforts at leading the industry in teacher wages, benefits, training and recognition.
In 1989 Boulder Day Nursery
assumed the ownership and operations of the Infant Center. The Infant
Nursery, which then became the Boulder Day Infant Nursery, was the
first program dedicated to infants in Boulder County. The Boulder Day Infant
Nursery building was sold in 1997 and operations were consolidated
under one roof at Spruce Street. To this day, the Infant Program
remains one of very few options for the low-income parent of an infant
child.
In 1992 Boulder Day was the first center in Boulder to be accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Boulder Day Nursery maintains that accreditation to this day.
In November 2001, almost 72 years to the day of the original groundbreaking, Boulder Day Nursery broke ground on a renovation and expansion project that preserved the historic building and added an additional 2,600 square feet of additional classroom and administrative space.
Today, as it was in 1917, we exist primarily to care for children of working parents and families of limited resources. We are the only childcare organization that works with low-income families to the extent that we do. The bottom line is that many families would simply not be able to live and work in Boulder without the affordable childcare provided by Boulder Day Nursery.
Boulder Day exists because of the dedication and generosity of the community at large and the people in it like you. During the cornerstone ceremony of the Spruce Street building in 1930, Lions Club president William Casey stated "The Lions club believes this is the Golden Rule in active life [referring to the building], we believe it will bring returns. We dedicate this institution to the betterment of this community and especially to the children. What would life be without the children? The child is like a flower. Surround it with love and joy and it becomes a beautiful soul and develops into a useful citizen."