Thomas F. Leen School

Image: No. 11111 Thomas Francis Leen School, photograph from Boston City Archives.

No. 1110 Bailey Street Schools.

See also Bailey Street Schools

The maps from 1884 through 1918 show the building on the left usually as wood-frame construction, but in 1889 it is shown as masonry. Perhaps the confusion is that the first floor seems to be clad in masonry and the upper floor in wood. In the early years the school was known only as Primary School. From 1884 to 1898 the building at the left (where the VFW post is located today) is the only school building. The 1904 map shows that the city had acquired the double house on the right to serve as a school. By 1910 the house had been demolished. The 1904, 1910, and 1918 maps show the name of the school as the Bailey Street School. The 1933 map shows that the brick building that was later the Thomas Francis Leen School is in place (where the house used to be), but its name was the Helen Burgess School in that year. The original school building still existed in 1933. I don’t know when it was removed and replaced with the concrete block VFW building that stands there today. The Leen School was surplus property in the 1980s, and the City turned the building into a residential facility.

Skills

Posted on

June 29, 2020