Oak Square School

The Oak Square School is situated between Nonantum and Tremont Street at the foot of Nonantum Hill in the Oak Square section of the Brighton Neighborhood of Boston. The primary facade faces Nonantum (east), a residential street of modest 20th century Colonial Revival one-and two-family houses and three-deckers typical of much of the surrounding western Brighton area. The Oak Square School was built in 1894 as a two-room schoolhouse in the popular Colonial Revival style and was enlarged in 1923 with a two-room rear addition to form the present T-shape. The school is located on a sparsely landscaped irregularly shaped lot which slopes gradually towards Oak Square. The property is surrounded by a simple cast iron fence and is largely asphalted for use as a playground.

The building is set back forty feet from Nonantum Street,with rear addition and playground facing Tremont Street. The original rectangular block, a one-story frame, clapboarded structure, painted yellow, is set on a stone foundation which varies in height from two to six feet to accommodate the building to its sloping site. The 9 to 3 bay main block measures 90 feet by 23 feet and is 35 feet high from base to slate ridge-hipped roof. Windows in the main block are fitted with nine-over-nine sash and accented by paneled, capped Tintels; small square basement windows correspond in placement to the windows in the main elevation. On the short sides, two windows have been converted to emergency exits with metal stairways leading to the ground.

The block is further defined by corner boards, a water table between clapboards and stone foundation, and a modillion cornice. The 1923 addition is connected to the main block by a narrow, one-bay pavillion.

/Architect Edmund March Wheelwright Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Oak Square School retains integrity of location, design, setting, materials and workmanship. It is significant as one of the last and most elaborate examples of a now obsolete building type -- the small, 19th century wood frame suburban schoolhouse -- and as a representative example of the work of Edmund March Wheelwright, prominent Boston architect who is said to have set a new standard of excellence in American municipal architecture. The two-room schoolhouse, completed in 1894, was the smallest of only three wooden primary schools built by Wheelwright during his four-year term as Boston City Architect, from 1891 to 1895.

The trend toward larger masonry school buildings made the Oak Square School one of the last examples of a building type that was becoming obsolete in city school systems by the turn of the century. By the first decade of the 20th century, it was city policy to build all schools of common brick. Edmund March Wheelwright (1854-1912) studied architecture at M.I.T. and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and worked for the firms of Peabody & Stearns and McKim, Mead & White before beginning practice in Boston in 1885. As City Architect from 1891 to 1895, wheelwright designed numerous public schools, hospitals, fire houses and police stations, all maintaining a high standard of design and construction.

Remaining works from this period include two other Brighton buildings, the Police Station (1893) and the Brighton High School, now Taft Junior High (1894), as well as the Park Street subway entrance (NHL), Bowdoin School (recently rehabilitated for housing), and Fire Department Headquarters (currently being remodeled for use by the Pine Street Inn).