The Town Hall of Westport, 110 Myrtle Avenue, was originally built in 1923 as the Bedford Public School. In 1978 the school closed and the building was converted to become the Town Hall, opening in 1983. The Town Hall had previously been in a building at 90 Post Road East, built in 1908.
Adjacent to the Hadlyme Congregational Church in East Haddam is the Hadlyme North School. A one-room schoolhouse, it was built in 1794 and was initially run by the Ecclesiastical Society, later by a School Society and then by the town starting in 1865. The school closed in 1929 and by 1967 the building was in danger of demolition. The North School Society was formed to preserve the building, which is maintained by the Society and the Congregational Church.
The Parish House of Christ Episcopal Church in Roxbury was built around 1835 as the Old Center Schoolhouse. Roxbury Center School closed in 1942 and the building was sold to Christ Church. An addition was constructed in 1958 and the Parish House (located at 4 Wellers Bridge Road) was thoroughly renovated in the 1990s.
After the 8-room wood-frame Center School in Watertown burned down in December of 1906, it was replaced by the brick Baldwin School at 68 North Street in 1907. The new school was named for Truman P. Baldwin (1838-1907). An interesting Arts & Crafts building that combines Classical and Victorian design elements, the school was in use until 2000, when the town opened a new school. The town sold the building to a developer planning to convert it into elderly housing (neighbors challenged the zoning for housing in court). In 2014, however, the building was sold to the Taft School. (more…)
In 1893, Emily Wells Foster, a Sunday school teacher at the Morgan Street Mission School/Morgan Street Chapel in Hartford, started the nation’s first nursery for blind children in a house on Kenyon Street in Hartford. Her efforts began with her interest in a blind baby on Hartford’s East Side who spent his waking hours in a small pen in a dingy room. In 1893 she also became Assistant Secretary of the State Board of Education for the Blind, later serving as Secretary and Treasurer from 1901 to 1905. (“Will Honor Benefactor Of Blind People: Memorial to Be Placed on Grave of Mrs. Foster, Who Started Education Program Here,” Hartford Courant, November 12, 1936) The nursery school soon moved to a larger residence on Asylum Avenue. A grammar school was also added, which moved to a new building at 120 Holcomb Street in Hartford in 1911. A Colonial Revival building, it was designed by Andrews, Jacques & Rantoul, the same firm that designed the Governor’s Mansion and the Hartford Club. The Nursery and Kindergarten for the Blind had moved to Garden Street in Farmington, but later moved to join the grammar school in the building on Holcomb Street after a fire. The school would become known as the Connecticut Institution and Industrial Home for the Blind, then the Connecticut Institute for the Blind. In 1952 it was renamed the Oak Hill School. Today Oak Hill serves children and adults with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities.
The two-story building (with a partially exposed basement) at 167 Boston Post Road in East Lyme was built in 1916 as the Flanders Elementary School. It was designed by architect James Sweeney of New London. It served as a school until a new Flanders Elementary School building, attached to the 1916 building, opened in 1964. The original school building then became the Central Office of the East Lyme Public Schools.
In 1949 the Town of East Hartford opened three new or expanded schools: Hockanum School and Sunset Ridge School, both built in a similar Colonial Revival style, and a new addition to the Woodland School (originally built in 1928). On August 28, 1949, the Hartford Courant (“New Schools to Open on September 7”) reported that contractors had been ordered to focus on completing the classrooms, leaving gymnasiums, auditoriums and cafeteria kitchens until last (and therefore not yet fully completed when the buildings were opened to students). At Sunset Ridge School, at the corner of Forbes Street and Silver Lane, work on the grounds was focused on at least finishing one walkway as a dry summer had raised a considerable amount of dust. On September 25, 1949, the Courant reported (“New Building Contains 10 Classrooms”) that Sunset Ridge School, erected in less than a year at a cost of $825,000, could accommodate 350 pupils. The school was situated on 10-acre plot that had required extensive grading. The excess dirt had been used to fill in the site of the Woodland School addition and what remained was given to any residents who were willing to haul it away. A lot of clay had been encountered during the digging, which brought to mind that there was once a brick manufacturer located across the street from the school. A 12-classroom addition was constructed in 1951.
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