Education pioneers Carleton Washburne and Kate Dwyer, c. 1920. (WHS archives)

Originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2021 Gazette, by Duff Peterson.

In a village justly proud of its schools, Winnetka has only one street named after a teacher, Dwyer Court, which runs between Elm and Oak. It’s one of our few one-way streets, and our only street without a single residence or business on it. It honors a much-loved Winnetka teacher, Kate Dwyer, who taught as many as 3,000 Winnetka children in a career spanning 48 years. She taught first grade at Horace Mann School, which stood from 1899-1940 on the present site of the U.S. Post Office.

Both of Kate Dwyer’s parents came from Ireland, probably during 1845-1849 when famine, epidemics and civil unrest overwhelmed the country. At least a million people in Ireland died during those terrible years, and about two million people emigrated, mostly to the United States.[1] Thomas and Bridget Dwyer met in a cabin near the Patterson Tavern, which stood near the present entrance of Lloyd Park, and were married there in 1856. The couple lived briefly in a house near the present-day junction of Westmoor and Rosewood, where Kate was born in 1858. In 1864, Thomas Dwyer built a wood-frame house for his family at the southeast corner of Elm and Birch. Kate Dwyer would live in this house for more than 60 years.

In the early days, deep woods surrounded the Dwyer house, and Kate and her sister Emma had trouble finding their way to Winnetka’s only store, located at the southwest corner of Linden and Oak, until their father blazed a trail on trees along the way. Elizabeth Otis, an old-time resident, recalled that during the 1870s, the Dwyer house was “the last house on Elm Street . . . before you plunged into the wilderness.”[2] To the west, through the woods and down a slope, was a creek that children found difficult to cross. (Today’s Provident Avenue follows its course.) Beyond that, after a few hundred more yards of deep woods, lay the Skokie marsh, which in wet seasons was up to a mile wide.[3] These dense forests and wetlands formed an almost impenetrable barrier to east-west travel to and from the tiny settlement.

The founders of Winnetka, Charles and Sarah Peck, employed Thomas Dwyer to plant trees on and around their 11-acre property bounded by Elm, Maple, Pine and Lincoln. Over time, the area became known as an “arboretum,” attracting botany professors and their students.[4] This part of Winnetka still features a great variety of trees, many not native to the Midwest. It’s possible that some of the trees Thomas Dwyer planted are still standing.

Young Kate Dwyer strikes a pose for her formal portrait, c. 1890. (WHS archive)

Kate Dwyer attended Winnetka’s first public school on the present-day Village Green followed by Academy Hall, then the only school in the area offering a high school curriculum.[5] She did not go to college.[6] As a first-grade teacher, she taught generations of young Winnetkans to read and write, and she had a lot of patience, understanding that not all kids learn these skills in the same way. Reminiscences by her pupils recall her “gentle nature and outstanding ability.” For decades, many Winnetka parents specifically requested that Miss Dwyer teach their children.[7]

In 1919, the Winnetka School Board appointed the 29-year-old Carleton Washburne as Superintendent of Schools. Washburne soon introduced what became known as the “Winnetka Plan” of education, which recognized learning differences among children, replaced letter grades with “goals,” promoted self-paced learning, and provided kids with greater opportunities for creative expression.[8] Many parents saw Washburne’s ideas as a rejection of academic standards, and he was controversial in the village,[9] but Kate Dwyer (who by then had been teaching for 40 years) looked favorably on the young Californian’s reforms. Soon after Washburne’s arrival, she published an article in the local press contrasting the new methods with the old system of rote learning, saying, “We have passed from that day of cold formality to our present schools in which children are self-expressive and responsible.”[10] Near the end of her career, she was described as “one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the individual system of instruction.”[11]

In 1927, after Kate Dwyer retired, the School Board acquired her property at Elm and Birch to be used as play space for Horace Mann School. Although the Board planned to sell the Dwyer house at public auction, it being in good repair and worth moving elsewhere, it was demolished in July 1929.[12] In 1941, after Horace Mann itself was torn down, the Park District purchased a 0.6-acre tract behind the school site from the Board of Education.[13] This tract, combined with the old Dwyer property, became Dwyer Park.[14] Dwyer Court was platted before the Post Office’s construction in 1959.[15]

Kate Dwyer never married. She died in October 1933 and was buried in Greeley, Colorado, where she had been living with her sister.[16] She is remembered today in Dwyer Court, Dwyer Park, the Kate Dwyer Room at Skokie School, and as one of Winnetka’s finest and longest-serving teachers.