Walnut Street School (Reading, Massachusetts)

Walnut Street School
Location Reading, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°30′31″N 71°6′25″W / 42.50861°N 71.10694°W / 42.50861; -71.10694Coordinates: 42°30′31″N 71°6′25″W / 42.50861°N 71.10694°W / 42.50861; -71.10694
Built 1854
Architect Wadlin,Horace G.
Architectural style Italianate
MPS Reading MRA
NRHP Reference # 84002841[1]
Added to NRHP July 19, 1984

The Walnut Street School is a historic school building at 55 Hopkins Street in Reading, Massachusetts. A two-room schoolhouse built in 1854, it is the town's oldest public building. Since 1962 it has been home to the Quannapowitt Players, a local theatrical company. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.[1]

Description and history

The Walnut Street School is set on the west side of Hopkins Street in a residential area of southern Reading. It is a roughly rectangular single-story wood frame structure, with its long axis perpendicular to the street. The building is finished in wooden clapboards, and has a gable roof whose eaves are studded with Italianate brackets. The building corners are pilastered. The street-facing facade is two bays wide, with each bay containing a pair of sash windows; there is a single sash window in the gable end. Most of the south facade is covered by a modern extended vestibule with a hip roof, and a projecting gable-roofed portico supported by round columns near the western end. One entrance is under the portico, while another is roughly centered on the extended vestibule.[2]

The building originally housed two class-rooms when it was built in 1854, and is the oldest surviving civic building in the town.[3] In 1884 the building's entrance was redesigned and its interior reconfigured, to plans by local architect Horace G. Wadlin. It was used as a school until 1944. In 1962 it was sold to the Quannapowitt Players, a local theatrical organization,[2] which has further modified the entry and adapted the interior as a 150-seat theater.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 National Park Service (2008-04-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 "MACRIS inventory record and NRHP nomination for Walnut Street School". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
  3. ↑ "Reading MRA" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
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