Julia Richman

Julia Richman (1855-1912) was an American educator and pedagogue. She is remembered as the first woman district superintendent of schools in New York City. Richman wrote books on curriculum and started a number of school programs, including an optical one, special education for delinquents, chronic absentee students, as well as those who were above average. She was the first Normal College graduate to serve as principal in New York City and the first Jewish woman to obtain the position. The now defunct Julia Richman High School was named in her honor.

Richman was born on October 12, 1855, at 156 Seventh Avenue, New York City, the neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan. She was the third child of her parents, Moses and Theresa Melis Richman, with two younger and two older siblings. Her ancestry was a long line of rabbies and teachers, whose graves are in Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague. The cemetery and the graves were visited by Richman on her first European trip.

At the time of her birth, her father (who was in the paint and glazing business) had the contract to put all the glass in Cooper Institute (now Cooper Union; he accidentally drowned when Richman was just out of her teens. Shortly after she passed her fifth birthday, in the late fall of 1860, the family moved to Huntington, New York. The three older children were admitted to the Huntington High School. Richman entered the Primary Department, and remained a pupil of the school for six years. She was known as a “tom boy”.

In 1866, the family returned to New York in order to give the older children educational advantages not present in Huntington. They moved to East 13th Street, and Richman entered Grammar School No. 50, on 20th Street, between Second and Third Avenues. She attended no other public school, remaining there until the opening of the Normal School (later Normal College, now known as Hunter College), in February, 1870, from which she was graduated in June, 1872, when she was still 16. Although she received her diploma at that time, her license to teach was withheld until she had passed her birthday in October. She also attended the School of Pedagogy (now Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development) in that city.

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