This School Building in MA dates back to 1868

Myrtle Street School, Springfield Massachusetts

Date added: February 17, 2024

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The mill village of Indian Orchard grew up during the mid-19^th century. Using the waterpower of the dammed Chicopee River and its recently constructed canal, the Ward Manufacturing Company established a cotton mill in the area in 1854 and at the same time built boardinghouses and tenements for its workers. The Indian Orchard Mills Company followed suit in 1858 when it constructed a second mill and additional boardinghouses. During the 1860s the community grew rapidly, and by the end of the decade, a new school became a necessity.

The first school in Indian Orchard, built in 1848 by the Indian Orchard Canal Company, had been a one-room wood-frame structure that doubled as a church. It was located on Myrtle Street, between Hampden and Berkshire Streets. An 1854 replacement, at the southeast corner of Berkshire and Myrtle Streets, brought additional space, but it too quickly became insufficient. A two-story wood structure containing four rooms, the school was sold to the City of Springfield in 1857 and functioned as Indian Orchard's only school until the nominated property was built.

In the years immediately following the Civil War, Springfield embarked on a major school modernization plan. Six large brick schools, all with fashionable slate mansard roofs, were built. Among them was the new school in Indian Orchard, which today is the only one of the six still standing. The Indian Orchard Mills provided a lot at the southeast corner of Worcester and Myrtle Streets, and local architect James M. Currier drew the plans for the new school. Completed in 1868 at a cost of nearly $29,000, the brick building, known for many years simply as the Indian Orchard School, had five large classrooms and a hall that seated 250 persons. Its first principal was Rebecca Sheldon, the first woman to be named principal in the city of Springfield.

In the late 19^th century, Indian Orchard underwent a major industrial expansion, bringing still more people to the village. This made further enlargement of the educational facilities necessary. In 1903, an eight-room addition was begun, and it was finished the following year at a cost of over $40,000. The new building was constructed across the facade of the 1868 building and faced Myrtle Street. In 1914, a larger addition was built extending south from the first one. This was completed in 1915 for $125,000 and contained an assembly hall, gymnasium, lunchroom, and eight classrooms. Both additions were designed by the prominent local architectural firm of E. C. and G. C. Gardner, and both featured Classical Revival detailing.

The 1914 addition was planned for community use as well as educational purposes. Its assembly hall was the largest public space in the village, and it helped the Myrtle Street School become the social center for the entire community. The hall had a capacity of nearly 700, movable seats, a stage that could hold 75 to 100 people, and a gallery with a motion picture booth. The gymnasium, one of only two in Springfield at the time, was the result of the latest in educational theory. It was located in a separate building at the rear of the second addition and measured 74 by 43 feet. It had an iron roof and a gallery for spectators, and was built without interior posts that might impede visibility. The gymnasium faced Hampden Street and its entrance featured Egyptian Revival detailing, the only known example in Springfield, except for a few cemetery buildings.

The Myrtle Street School continued to serve its original function until the early 1980s. Now closed, the school is slated to be converted to housing for the elderly.

The Myrtle Street School is an outstanding and well-preserved educational complex as well as the largest public structure in Indian Orchard, an area with few remaining early examples of public institutional buildings. Its location in a neighborhood of modest workers' housing makes it particularly imposing. With its finely detailed Second Empire and Classical Revival features, it is also one of the most stylish buildings in the village of Indian Orchard.

Contemporaneous institutional buildings in the village include the Indian Orchard Mills Company Hall (1865), the two-story Fire Station (1870), and the larger Oak Street Fire Station (1897) with a five-story tower and the single-story Indian Orchard Branch Library (1908), the beginning of the branch library system for Springfield. None of these structures equal the Myrtle Street School's fine detailing and imposing size.

The school is significant for its three phases of construction, which reveal the evolution of schoolhouse architecture. The 1868 original structure, with its vertical orientation, blocklike mass, few windows, massive tower entry, and ungraded classrooms is typical of mid-19^th century educational design. With the new century, the modern school became more horizontal, with banks of large windows, a well-lit and well-ventilated plan with central staircase, clearly defined classroom wings and space for graded classrooms, and increasingly specialized facilities (such as a gymnasium and/or auditorium). All these features are part of the additions to the Myrtle Street School. It should be noted that the major architect of the 1914 addition, Eugene C. Gardner, was a nationally known theorist on the subject of schoolhouse design.

Architects

James M. Currier (1818-1893), born in North Troy, Vermont, was apprenticed to his brother at the age of fifteen to learn the trade of carpentry. After working as a carpenter and builder in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, he came to Springfield in 1853. In 1859, the firm of Currier and Richards; "carpenters, builders, and contractors"; was listed in a local directory. Currier was also listed separately as an architect. The partnership continued until 1873, when Currier reestablished his own practice.

As an architect, Currier designed four of Springfield's post-Civil War schoolhouses, as well as Main Street commercial blocks, a large woolen factory on the Mill River, and a forge shop in Brightwood that was described as the "largest axle factory in New England." Primarily a domestic architect, Currier was noted for his designs for the Warner Sturtevant House (ca. 1870) and the Joseph Stone Villa (ca. 1865), both still standing in Springfield, and a villa in Ottawa, Ontario, built for his brother and today used as the official residence of the Canadian Prime Minister. As a builder, Currier again concentrated on residential construction, particularly interior and exterior wood finishing. However, he is also known to have been in charge of the building of H. H. Richardson's Western Railroad Offices in Springfield in 1867 (still standing), and of the Springfield Institution for Savings Block of the same year (no longer extant). The Myrtle Street School is the most significant surviving example of Currier's less common institutional designs, as well as the only remaining example of his schoolhouse architecture.

Eugene Clarence Gardner (1836-1915) learned the masonry trade as a boy in Ashfield, Massachusetts. By the mid-1860s, he was a practicing architect in Northampton, and in 1869, he moved to Springfield to enter into partnership with Jason Perkins. The firm specialized in domestic architecture, and some fine examples of their work from the 1870s survive in else including the W. C. Wilcox House, the Rufus Chase House, and the Waitstill Allis House.

The partnership was dissolved in 1874 and Gardner resumed his own practice. Prominent domestic works that survive from this period of Gardner's career in Springfield include the Samuel Bowles House (1884) and the Julius H. Appleton House (1886). Another noteworthy design in Massachusetts is the Dimock Estate, built in Northampton in 1880. He also began writing a series of "how-to" books on various aspects of architecture. Between 1874 and 1888, eight books were published, including Homes and How to Make Them (1874), Common Sense in Church Building (1880), and Town and Country School Building (1888). These volumes received wide circulation and brought Gardner commissions from all over the country. By 1887, he could say that he had made plans for buildings in all but two of the states and territories of the United States. In 1885, Gardner began a journal entitled The Builder, which was published in Holyoke, Massachusetts; he served as editor until 1880.

In 1889, Gardner brought his son, George C., a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and George R. Pyne, a draftsman, into partnership with him. After Pyne's departure in 1900, E. C. and G. C. Gardner continued to work together until the elder Gardner's death in 1915. Gardner was considered the foremost architect in central Massachusetts in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and his additions to the Myrtle Street School date from this period in his career. The firm also designed many important municipal buildings in Springfield and the surrounding communities, including the Springfield City Hospital (1889), Springfield Museum of Science (1898), and the Springfield Street Railway Building (1897).

Gardner's national reputation flourished as well. His pattern books received both critical acclaim and extensive distribution. Critic Vincent Scully has called him "one of the last of the important pattern book authors" (The Shingle Style and The Stick Style, rev. ed., New Haven, 1971). Gardner also contributed articles to such diverse journals as Good Housekeeping, New England Magazine, American Architect and Building News, and Engineering Monthly, as well as the Tocal Springfield Republican.

While Gardner specialized in institutional architecture, there are few examples of his schoolhouse designs extant in the Springfield area. His carefully detailed Classical Revival-style additions to the Myrtle Street School are a particularly fine and well-preserved example of the work of a prolific and influential architect.

Building Description

The Myrtle Street School consists of a complex of four interconnected brick buildings located on a block of Myrtle Street between Hampden and Worcester Streets in northeastern Springfield, more than six miles from the center of the city. It is situated in the Indian Orchard section of Springfield, an area along the Chicopee River that was developed in the mid-nineteenth century as a planned mill village.

The school is built into a hillside on the upper terrace of the Chicopee River. Set back fifty-five feet from Myrtle Street, the school occupies a lot of over two acres, with sloping lawns to the north and east, and playing fields and a parking lot at its rear, western side. The school's surroundings are primarily residential, with single- and multi-family wood-frame houses of the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Built in three stages between 1868 and 1915, the school is the work of two prominent Springfield architects, James M. Currier and E. C. Gardner. Each section is distinguished by well-preserved period details and styling. The school has been well maintained and is the second oldest surviving school in Springfield.

In its present form, the school is U-shaped in plan, but with asymmetrical projections resulting from the numerous additions it has sustained. The 1868 mansard-roofed original structure is visible from Worcester Street, to the north of Myrtle Street. This structure is now at the rear of the school. The major additions of 1903 and 1914 are joined by a central entrance pavilion and present a united main facade to Myrtle Street. The gymnasium, also part of the 1914 addition, faces Hampden Street to the south.

1868 Original Building

The earliest part of the school, dating from 1868, is located at the rear, western side of the complex. This portion is a 2 1/2-story brick building standing on a brick foundation. It is dominated by a projecting central pavilion that once served as the school's main entrance. The building has elaborately detailed Second Empire styling. A brick water table surmounts a raised basement and delineates the base of the first story; rising from the water table are round-headed windows with brownstone sills. On the west facade, these windows are unadorned. On the north and south sides, however, the windows are further elaborated by rounded brick hood molds with decorative stops and are set into recessed two-story brick arches. Above a modillioned wooden cornice, the building is capped by a slate mansard roof with ornate wooden dormers. The western facade of the building was obscured when the first addition was made to the school in 1903.

1903 Classroom Wing

The first addition, which faces Myrtle Street, is an imposing three-story structure with a fifteen-bay facade and a central pediment. It was built in 1903 across the western facade of the 1868 building and features fine Classical Revival-style detailing. The brick addition has a central, five-bay pedimented pavilion projecting from its main facade. Monumental brick pilasters anchor the pediment. Centered in the pavilion is a recessed entrance framed by brownstone pilasters and crowned by a brownstone entablature with cornice, dentils, egg-and-dart molding, and a wide frieze. Flanking the pavilion are two symmetrical five-bay wings. Window openings are topped by brownstone lintels on the first story and brownstone keystones on brick lintels on the second story.

1914

In 1914, a large three-part section was added to the Myrtle Street School. It consisted of a second large classroom wing facing Myrtle Street, a three-story recessed entry pavilion connecting the 1903 and 1914 wings, and a low, one-story gymnasium block.

Classroom Wings

Extending to the south of the 1903 wing, this addition has a similar but not identical imposing facade facing Myrtle Street, with a central projecting pavilion. Differences of fenestration and detailing mark the addition's sixteen-bay facade. The pavilion is six bays wide and has the words "Myrtle Street School" inscribed in brownstone between the first and second stories. Arched window hoods form an arcade on the second story. Symmetrical five-bay wings flank the pavilion. The southern side of the building, facing Hampden Street, is noteworthy for its two-story, three-bay projecting pedimented pavilion with a monumental pilastered entrance. The entrance has a shouldered brownstone surround and is crowned by a brownstone entablature with cornice ancones and wide decorated frieze. Above the entry is a single window opening, the only fenestration on this side of the building. The two flanking paneled bays contain brownstone plaques with cornucopia festoons.

Entry Pavilion

A recessed three-story three-bay entry joins the two classroom wings on Myrtle Street. The first story, with its central entrance, is covered by a portico with brownstone Corinthian columns. Three arched windows with brownstone surrounds and keystone occupy the second story above the entrance. They are separated by sculptured rondels.

Gymnasium

The gymnasium is located at the rear of the 1914 classroom wing and faces Hampden Street. It is a low one-story flat-roofed block of brick construction. Its three-bay facade features a central entrance with unusual brownstone Egyptian Revival detailing, including battered piers, cavetto cornice, and a winged sun disk. Above the entrance is a brownstone panel inscribed with a Latin motto: "Mens Sana In Corpore Sano" ("A Sound Mind in a Sound Body"). Further above the entrance is an ornate brownstone date plaque. The gymnasium is capped by a curved parapet.

The school retains much of its original wood trim and cabinetry throughout. Wooden staircases and structural supports in the 1868 section, as well as steel and terrazzo staircases and steel supports in the major additions, also remain.