School Newton MA

Oak Hill Middle School // 1936

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In the 1930s, America was in the throes of the Great Depression, and towns and cities struggled to provide services for the ever-growing populations, all the while suffering from lower tax revenues. The New Deal was enacted as a result, which provided a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939. One of these programs was the Public Works Administration (PWA), which funded and built large-scale public works projects such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools, to provide jobs and bolster local economies. In Newton, the developing Oak Hill Village required a new public school, and the town received funding for the Oak Hill Middle School in 1935. Architects Densmore, LeClear, and Robbins were hired to provide designs for a new school, and builders completed the building the next year. The Georgian Revival building is constructed with red brick with cast stone trim. The 16-over-16 windows and cupola also work to showcase the beauty of the design.

Do you know of any PWA projects near you?

Ralph Waldo Emerson School // 1904

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One of the few architect designed buildings in Upper Falls Village in Newton is the Ralph Waldo Emerson School built in 1904-1905. The village school in Upper Falls consistently was outgrown by the rapidly growing population in the 19th century, leading to new schools being built every couple decades. The 1846 Village School (featured previously) was outgrown and a major landowner, Otis Pettee willed a valuable piece of land to the town for the erection of a new school and firehouse, both were built that next year. By 1869, a second schoolhouse was built on the site in the fashionable Second Empire style, named the Wade School. As expected, the two adjacent school buildings were deemed obsolete and the town, inflated by the industrial wealth of Upper Falls, hired the architectural firm of Hartwell, Richardson & Driver to design a large brick schoolhouse, with a cost of $92,000. The building was occupied as a school until the 1990s until (you guessed it) the schools in the town consolidated, and the Emerson School was then converted to residential units.