Edward Everett School

Edward Everett School

Edward Everett (1794-1865), a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, a distinguished orator and writer, was born in Dorchester. He held public office as U.S. Representative, as governor and U.S. Senator. Everett received appointments as Secretary of State, Minister to Great Britain and President of Harvard.

School building was an on-going endeavor in the second half of the nineteenth century.  Some of the more notable school buildings include: William Stoughton School (1855), River Street; Edward Everett School (1856), Sumner Street; Christopher Gibson School (1857), School Street; The Thaddeus Mason Harris School (1861), Adams Street; and the Edmund P. Tileston School (1868), Norfolk Street. Minot School (1886) Neponset Avenue.

Edward Everett School (Elementary)

The first Edward Everett School building on Sumner Street was moved when a new one was built by the town of Dorchester in 1856.  It became the Dorchester Athenaeum.

No. 2099 Dorchester Athaenum on Pond Street, adapted from the former Edward Everett School

The next Edward Everett School building was ready for occupancy on February 25, 1856.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. 12042 The wood-frame Edward Everett School, mistakenly dated as 1933

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1876, the City of Boston built a new brick building to the west of the 1856 building.  The older building took the name, the Richard C. Humphrey School.

No. 11559 Edward Everett School from Historic New England

In 1894, the Everett School Association held a reunion at the Old Dorchester Clubhouse, a few blocks away from the school building on Sumner Street.  The article reporting on the event stated that the school “is commodious and attractive, but its generous arms cannot hold all who throng to them.  Primary schoolhouses are utilized on both Dorchester and Savin Hill avenues, and yet, so eager is the desire to get an education, that every square foot of room is growing more precious.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22742 Edward Everett School from The Dorchester Beacon, February 17, 1894.  The artist would have been standing at the corner of Willis and Stoughton Street, with Willis Street coming in from the left and Stoughton Street to the right leading to Stoughton Street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1909 a new Edward Everett School building, designed by E. T. P. Graham, architect, was constructed at 71 Pleasant Street

No. 7254 Postcard.  Caption on front: Edw. Everett School, Dorchester, Mass.  Postmarked June 10, 1912, with one-cent stamp.  On verso: The Royal Blue Card. Pub. by Putnam Art Co., Grove Hall, Boston.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. 12041  photo from city archives of the Edward Everett School building on Pleasant Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source:

William Dana Orcutt. Good Old Dorchester. A Narrative History of the Town, 1630-1893.  (Cambridge, 1893), 347-348.


What’s In a Name? Names of Boston’s Schools: Their Origin
. Boston: School Volunteers for Boston and the Boston Public Schools, 1980.