Hillsborough Consolidated School (HES)

On Saturday, November 19, 1949, Somerset County Schools Superintendent Sampson G. Smith declared the era of the "little red schoolhouse" officially over. Smith made his remarks at the ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone of the Hillsborough Consolidated School, now known as Hillsborough Elementary School, or HES.

Artist's rendering of the proposed Hillsborough Consolidated School,
 7 July 1949 Courier News

Just 20 years earlier in 1929 Hillsborough's first modern school, Bloomingdale, was opened on Amwell Road near the intersection of the present-day Route 206. The first through eighth-grade building brought the "central school" concept to Hillsborough. But its four classrooms - five when the basement was pressed into service - only put a couple of the one and two-room Hillsborough schoolhouses out of business. Increasing enrollment meant that in the 1949-50 school year much older schools - Clover Hill, Pleasant View, Neshanic, Liberty, and Flagtown were still being utilized.

Cornerstone Ceremony at Hillsborough Consolidated School,
21 November 1949 Home News

In February 1949 Hillsborough voters passed a $380,000 bond referendum for a new twenty-room school to be built next to Bloomingdale right at the intersection of Amwell and 206. The original configuration of the building had 400 feet of frontage on Amwell Road, and 150 on Route 206. Amenities were to include a combination cafeteria-auditorium and a modern kitchen. The Home News of November 21, 1949, described other aspects of the plan:

The floor and roof will be of steel-deck construction, and the building will have flourescent lighting throughout. Its heating plant will be forced warm air, with complete fresh-air ventilation, and every room will have thermostatically-controlled heat.

Another innovation was that each "acoustically treated" classroom would include an exterior door to reduce "fire hazard".

The school board awarded construction contracts in August 1949 and construction began within the month. By June of the next year, with construction nearly complete, the school hosted its first event; the Hillsborough Schools 8th grade commencement exercises were held in the auditorium.

26 March 1965 Home News

Hillsborough Consolidated School has undergone two major expansions since 1950. The first was the addition of the classrooms, gym-auditorium, and cafeteria on the Route 206 side in 1955, necessitated by the Green Hills and Country Club Homes developments. The second was a $1.3 million project in 1992 which added the library/media center, computer lab, and music room.

Although we know the building today as Hillsborough Elementary School - and it did begin as a K-8 school - for many of the years preceding the opening of the middle school on Triangle Road, the school housed grades 7, 8, and 9. After the middle school debuted, the Consolidated School became - for a time - Hillsborough's sixth-grade school. Other configurations have included K-5 and K-6. During several school years the Bloomingdale building next door was used as an annex, sometimes for art classes, kindergarten classes, or other grades when space was needed.

The school celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2000 and currently houses students in kindergarten through fourth grade. It is the oldest of the nine Hillsborough Township schools currently in use.