The Elbridge Smith school building was located at the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Centre Street and served as Dorchester’s second high school. At the time it was completed in 1870 there were about two hundred and twenty pupils in the school.
It served as the town’s second high school until the yellow brick Dorchester High School building was erected in Codman Square in 1900. The Elbridge Smith School was demolished in 1957 and replaced by a one-story brick structure built around an interior courtyard. This new school was named to honor Patrick O’Hearn, a former city building commission and the founder of the Massachusetts Cooperative Bank in Fields Corner. In 2009, the building was renamed the Henderson School to honor Dr. William Henderson, whose 20 year tenure as the leader of the school made the school a model for diversity and inclusion.
Second Dorchester High School
entry from
Boston. Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Boston. 1888. (Boston, 1889), 50.
Dorchester High School.–This school was established in 1852. Before the annexation of the town to Boston, the accommodations of the old schoolhouse were insufficient to meet the increased demands of the school, and a new building was in process of erection oat the time of annexation. The new building was completed and occupied in September, 1870.