Schools

Old High School, Portsmouth, NH

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The old Portsmouth High School building on Islington Street, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Portsmouth’s old high school building opened in 1905, and like so many other historic buildings in the city it still stands today.  It was last used as a high school in the 1950s, but it has since been converted into apartments.  From this angle, the building’s appearance hasn’t changed much, although at some point the school was expanded in the back, with a matching addition on the southwest corner, giving the formerly symmetrical building somewhat of an “L” shape from above.  It is located right next to the much older former Portsmouth Academy building, which opened in 1809, nearly two decades before the city’s first public high school was established.

Old Library, Portsmouth, NH

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The old Portsmouth Public Library building at the corner of Islington and Middle Streets in Portsmouth, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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This building was built in 1809 as the home of the Portsmouth Academy, a private college preparatory school.  It was used by the academy until 1868, and then it was leased to the city to use as a public school.  In 1896, it was extensively renovated into a permanent home for the Portsmouth Public Library, which previously had gone through a somewhat nomadic existence between several different locations in the city.  The historic building was used by the library for the next 110 years, before moving to a new location on Parrott Avenue in 2006.  Today, the building is used by the Portsmouth Historical Society for their Discover Portsmouth center.  Although it was heavily altered in the 1896 library renovation, it still has considerable historical significance as an example of an early 19th century school, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

County Jail, Lowell, Mass

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The Middlesex County Jail on Thorndike Street in Lowell, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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It’s hard to find too many buildings with a more unusual combination of uses, but this building has seen it all over the past 159 years.  Opened as a jail in 1856, it could house just over 100 inmates, most of whom were serving relatively short sentences for minor crimes.  Architecturally, it is an early example of Romanesque Revival, a style that was popularized several decades later by Henry Hobson Richardson, and can be seen in many public buildings of the late 19th century.  The building was in use as a jail until 1919, when dwindling numbers of inmates meant the county couldn’t justify keeping it open.

Concerned that they might once again need it, Middlesex County held off on selling it until 1926, when the Catholic Church purchased it and converted it into a prep school, Keith Academy.  Since the interior layout of a jail is generally not effective for schools, the entire building was gutted in the conversion to Keith Academy, leaving the exterior mostly untouched but completely changing everything else.  The school closed in 1970, and the building later underwent another conversion, to condominiums.  Today, it houses 56 condominium units, and although the jail turned school turned housing complex has gone through a lot of changes in over a century and a half, from the outside it doesn’t look much different from when the first inmates arrived in 1856.

Plymouth Normal School, Plymouth, NH

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Rounds Hall at the Plymouth Normal School, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2018, now part of Plymouth State University:

The history of Plymouth State University goes back to 1808, when the Holmes Plymouth Academy was established as a training school for teachers.  In 1871, the state took over the school and renamed it the Plymouth Normal School, with “normal” in this sense referring to training teachers.  Like many other normal schools in the country, it went through a series of name changes as the school expanded and added more academic programs.  From 1939 to 1963, it was the Plymouth Teachers College, and from 1963 to 2003 it was Plymouth State College before again being renamed as Plymouth State University.

The building in both photos is Rounds Hall, which was built in 1890 along with a dormitory, which can be seen beyond and just to the left of Rounds Hall in the 1907 photo.  Rounds Hall still stands today, and is the oldest building on campus.  However, Normal Hall, the old dormitory, didn’t last too long.  Not long after the first photo was taken, the barely 20 year old building was in such poor condition that it had to be demolished.  Its replacement, Mary Lyon Hall, was built on the same spot in 1916,  is still used as a dormitory today; it can be seen in the distance beyond the trees.

Fuller Hall, Suffield Connecticut

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The North Building, on the campus of Suffield Academy, probably around 1920. Image from Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Suffield, Connecticut (1921).

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The building, now heavily renovated and renamed Fuller Hall, as seen in 2015:

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It took me a while to figure out that this is, in fact, the same building.  The North Building was built in 1873, replacing the 1845 Ladies Building that had burned the previous year.  It is located just to the right of the Memorial Building, and both of these buildings date back to when Suffield Academy was known as the Connecticut Literary Institute.  However, while the Memorial Building still resembles its 19th century appearance, Fuller Hall is essentially unrecognizable from the first photo.  A substantial renovation in the 1950s removed most of the original Second Empire style architectural elements, including the mansard roof (and with it, the entire fourth floor), the three small towers, the front porch, and the window cornices.  A close examination of the 2015 shows the difference between the newer, lighter bricks, and the original, darker-colored bricks.

Memorial Building, Suffield Connecticut

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The Middle Building, later named the Memorial Building, on the campus of Suffield Academy, probably around 1920. Image from Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Suffield, Connecticut (1921).

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The Memorial Building in 2015:

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Suffield Academy was founded in 1833 as the Connecticut Baptist Literary Institute, originally with the objective of training Baptist ministers.  However, the school soon dropped the name “Baptist,” and became the Connecticut Literary Institute.  The school’s original building, later known as the Old South Building, was located where the present-day library is, just to the left of the building seen here.

By the middle of the 19th century, the school had grown and had become co-ed, so more buildings were added to the campus, including the Middle Building, seen here, which opened in 1854.  It was renovated in 1907 and rededicated the following year, to coincide with the school’s 75th anniversary.  A few years later, in 1912, the school renamed itself Suffield School, and in 1937 again changed its name to Suffield Academy.  This historic building also received a new name; in 1950 it was rededicated again as the Memorial Building.  Today, it is used primarily for classrooms and administrative offices, and aside from the removal of the cornices along the roof, it doesn’t look all that different from its appearance nearly 100 years ago.