Schools

Tapley School, Springfield, Mass

by

The Tapley School, at the corner of Bay and Sherman Streets in Springfield, around 1892. Image from Picturesque Hampden (1892).

860_1892c picturesquehampden

The building in 2015:

860_2015
This historic building is located within the McKnight neighborhood of Springfield, which covers the area to the east of the Armory and north of State Street. As the city’s population grew in the 1870s, this area was developed by brothers John and William McKnight, who built around 300 houses here, most of which are still standing today.

To serve the growing population here, this school opened in 1887 at the corner of Bay and Sherman Streets, right at the heart of the neighborhood. It was expanded around 1910 with a large wing to the south, which is not visible in the present view, and it remained in use as a school well into the 1970s. After it closed, it was vacant for over a decade, but it was sold converted into apartments in 1993. Aside from the 1910 addition, the exterior is largely the same as it was when the first photo was taken, and today it is one of the oldest school buildings still standing in the city.

Old MIT Campus, Boston

by

The former Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, looking west on Boylston Street from near Berkeley Street in Boston, around 1890-1901. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

808_1890-1901c loc

The scene in 2015:

808_2015
The first permanent home for Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in this building in the foreground. Completed in 1866 and later named the Rogers Building in honor of the school’s founder, it matched the architectural style of the adjacent Museum of Natural History, which is still standing today just to the right of here. The school was established to fill a need for a college education that focused on modern developments in science and technology, and despite some initial challenges such as the Civil War in the 1860s and an economic recession in the 1870s, the school began to grow. In 1883, the campus expanded with the Walker Building, which can be seen to the left in the first photo, at the corner of Clarendon Street. Even this was not enough, though; from 1881 to 1897 enrollment nearly quadrupled, and by the early 1900s the school was spread out across 10 buildings in the Copley Square area.

In 1916, most of the school moved to a new campus across the river in Cambridge, although the Rogers Building was retained as the home of the School of Architecture until the 1930s, when it was sold to the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. Both the Rogers and Walker Buildings were demolished in 1939, and the insurance company built their new headquarters here, as seen in the 2015 photo. New England mutual merged with Met Life in 1995, and today their former headquarters is mixed-use building with retail and office tenants.

Lenox Academy, Lenox, Mass

by

The Lenox Academy building on Main Street in Lenox, sometime around the 1800s. Image courtesy of the Lenox Library Association.

792_1800sc lenoxlibraryassociation

The building in 2015:

792_2015
Lenox Academy was established in 1803 as a private school, and this building was built around that time. The school closed in 1866, and the building was used as the town’s public high school from 1869 to 1879, and again from 1886 to 1908. In between, the building was renovated and moved to a new foundation in 1879. The first photo appears to have been taken sometime after this move, probably in the 1880s or 1890s. The last school to use this building was the private Trinity School, which was here from 1911 until the 1920s. After that, it was vacant until 1947, when it was sold to the town of Lenox to protect it from demolition. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and it is now the home of the the Lenox Historical Society and the Lenox Historical Commission.

Simmons College, Boston

by

The Main College Building at Simmons College in Boston, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

778_1906c loc

Simmons College in 2015:

778_2015
Simmons College is an all-female college in Boston that was established in 1899, although the idea behind it came much earlier.  It started with John Simmons, a clothing manufacturer who had made his fortune through an innovative way of selling clothing.  At a time when most clothing was tailor-made to the individual person, Simmons began producing suits in standard sizes, which allowed customers to immediately wear their new clothing, instead of waiting days or weeks for it to come back from the tailor.  This simple change made him wealthy, but much of the work in his factories was done by uneducated women who could not find any better work.  So, upon his death in 1870, he left funding for the creation of a college that would provide women with a practical liberal arts education.

Unfortunately for the would-be college, most of the money that John Simmons left for it was in the form of property, which was destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872.  Because of the inability of the insurance companies to cover all of the fire-related claims, it took another 30 years before the school finally held its first classes, in a leased building on St. Botolph Street.  Two years later, their first permanent building was completed here on the Fenway, next to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which had opened a year earlier.

Soon after the first photo was taken, the building was expanded on the far side in 1909, and 20 years later a second wing was added in the foreground, which can now be seen on the far left of the 2015 photo.  The college has since expanded, and there are now four other academic buildings on the campus, but the original section of the Main College Building remains very much the same as it did 110 years ago, although it is hard to tell with the trees blocking most of the view from here.

Cushman Hall, Monson, Mass

by

Cushman Hall on Main Street in Monson, around 1904-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

757_1890-1920c mfl

The building in 2015:

757_2015
This former dormitory is the last surviving purpose-built structure from the old Monson Academy, which operated here in Monson from 1804 until it merged with Wilbraham Academy in 1971 and moved to their campus.  Its construction in 1904 was funded by Thaddeus L. Cushman, and it was named in honor of his nephew, Frank Chapin Cushman, who died the year before at the age of 16.

After the school merger, the former dormitory became an apartment building, and it remains in use today.  The 2011 tornado destroyed two of the last three surviving academy buildings, and directly across the street from Cushman Hall the Town Hall/former Monson High School building was damaged beyond repair.  However, Cushman Hall sustained minimal damage, and today it is still an excellent reminder of the town’s educational history.

Holmbrook, Monson, Mass

by

The Holmbrook mansion on Main Street in Monson, probably around 1900-1920. Image courtesy of the Monson Free Library.

756_1890-1920c mfl

The house in 2015:

756_2015

The restored house in 2018:

This beautiful Second Empire style mansion was built around 1870 for local factory owner Cyrus W. Holmes.  He named it Holmbrook, and he lived here until his death in 1891 at the age of 89.  Curiously, his son died only six days later, and the house eventually came into the ownership of Adelaide Wingate, who donated the house to Monson Academy in 1947 to use as a dormitory.  The school built tennis courts and a ski slope in the backyard, but in 1971 Monson Academy merged with Wilbraham Academy and moved to their Wilbraham campus.

The house was damaged by the June 1, 2011 tornado, which destroyed two former Monson Academy buildings across the street from here.  When the second photo was taken, the house was still undergoing repairs more than four years later.  A 1988 Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System report described it as “undoubtedly Monson’s best example of the Second Empire style,” and even after the tornado it still retains much of its original Victorian detail, and it will hopefully soon be fully restored.

2018 update: The exterior of the house has since been restored, and I have added an updated photo to reflect these changes.