The two men gingerly pushing the stroller-size rig across the upper field at Verona High School hold the key to where Verona holds its home football games this season.
On Monday, TPI Environmental began a scan of Thomas J. Sellitto field with ground-penetrating radar to see what is below the surface. In mid-August a hole opened up near the “home ” side of the field that may have been an old well shaft. The 15-foot-deep hole was filled with gravel and capped, but the Verona Board of Education wants to know what else is underground and what condition it is in. That could determine whether the Hillbillies can hold their home games at the field and whether the music program needs to find an alternate location for its key fundraiser, the marching band festival on October 6. Ten years ago, a sinkhole developed in the southern end zone that caused home games to be moved to Veterans Field on Linn Drive.
VHS and the upper football field were the site of a large orphanage from 1873 to 1900, the Newark City Home, and the well may have dated from that era. Superintendent Steven A. Forte said yesterday that he was unable to get any plans from the Newark City Home from county archives. But the map below, taken from a book published in 1933, shows several buildings on the VHS site. (You can also see the now-closed Bahr Lumber business at the top of the map and, to the right, the Grove Avenue School, which now is known as F.N. Brown.)
According to Verona historian Robert L. Williams, the map shows cottages 1 to 4, the auditorium and the powerhouse for the boys’ part of the home, structures built after the original building burned to the ground in 1900. That structure, Williams says, was located on what is now Sellitto Field. The replacement buildings were torn after World War II. Verona High School opened in 1956.
Forte said that the BOE hopes to have results of the radar scan quickly.