New Zealand--Individual Schools: River Terrace School
Figure 1.-- Here we see what lookls to be a class photo taken in 1912 at the River Terrace School. It brings up an interesting question about historic imagery. It is now possible to colorize old photographs. This can now be done beautifully. But it is not possible to determine color from black and white photographs. Thus the colors inputed is guess work and not anything that can be detected from the old photographs. This our approach is to lload the black and white image as the vmost historically accurate, but to laod the colorized image as a mouuse over image. Here the colorized image is done beautifully, but you can tell it is colorized, not because it was taken before color photography perfected. But notice how everyone is pictured in blue. That is very unlikely. Photo source: Waimea South Collection.
Here we see what lookls to be a class photo taken in 1912 at the River Terrace School. The school was located in Brightwater (Tasman District) at the northwest of South Island. The River Terrace School was a early New Zealand school. It opened in 1855 and closed in 1920. You can see the wooden structure in the background. It looks rather rundown which is probaly why it was closed in 1920. It seems to be a fairly small school. The children look to be about 8 years old. There are 17 children. An eralier portrait taken about 1900s shows the school in better condition and about 50 students. We even have the names of the children. Back Row: Rentle Andrews, Stan Silcock, Ray Kerr, Len Kerr, Nolan Andrews, Walber Williams, Bert Williams. Middle Row: Hilda Palmer, Nellie Barton, Hazel Cole, Esme Palmer, Adeline Smith, Mrytle Harman, Edith Palmer. Front Row: Trevor Andrews, Cecil Kerr, Clarrie Andrews. Most of the boys are wearing similar striped shirts done in sailor styles with plain white dickies. The girls all wear dresses with white pinafores. Pinafores were still very common at the time, but the 1910s was the last decade that pinafores were common. When the children are all dressed alike, it usually means the shool reuired it, but we do not know that to be the case. None of the girls wear haior bow even though hairbows wre all the rage in the 1910s, at least in America.
