Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1981. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Jefferson School is a historic school at 200 Middle Street in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The Queen Anne style school was designed by Shepard S.”
Wikipedia article Jefferson School (Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 249 National Register listings in Norfolk County · listed in 1981 · category: Building · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Norfolk County.
Architectural style. Queen Anne style architecture in the United States
Architect. Shepard S. Woodcock
National Register reference number.81000114- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
371 since 2015
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 371 fires within 5 miles of Jefferson School between
2015 and 2020, burning about 170 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Recreation and ceremony
159
Debris and open burning
97
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
57
Smoking
40
Misuse of fire by a minor
13
Fireworks
3
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 6,217 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Jefferson School between 1815 and
1975: 3,764 Plantae, 1,502 Animalia, 601 Fungi, 300 Chromista, 31 Unrecorded, 13 Protozoa, 6 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by (MARSDEN, H W), A Loveridge, A Phelps Wyman and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
19 workings within 5 miles of Jefferson School: 10 producers, 9 past producers.
10 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Granite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Weymouth, the town this property stands in, in 22 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 7 thunderstorm wind, 5 flash flood, 3 hail, 3 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Minor flooding occurred along the Old Swamp River in South Weymouth, as a result of nearly 4 inches of rainfall in an 18-hour period. A crest of 4.6 feet was observed around 11 am EST on the 24th, which was just over its flood stage of 4.5 feet. No flood damage was reported.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Named in the fire insurance atlases
Sanborn surveyors printed an index of the
town's establishments at the front of each atlas. This property is named in
one, read straight off the scanned sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
Jefferson School is a good example of the Queen Anne style applied to an institutional use. The school is located on a large flat site near a major center of town. The large, 2½ story, I-shape building is constructed of wood, with clapboard and wood shingle siding. The main block of the building, running parallel to the street, has a high hip roof, while the central pavilion on the facade has a steep gable roof. At either side of this pavilion and joining it to the main block is a decorative hip-roofed porch. The design of the building is quite symmetrical and functional, and the ornamentation of elements is simple and discrete. The symmetrical fenestration consists of narrow 2 over 2 windows separated horizontally by a decoratively shingled pent roof.
Each of the 4-bay sides of the main block culminates in a large triangular dormer. The visual focus of the building is the large central pavilion. The gable returns of this wing are connected by a narrow corniced fascia which contains a decoratively shingled gable field and continues around the entire building. Centered on the facade of the pavilion on the first floor is a horizontal pair of windows, in a characteristic Queen Anne glazing. pattern of a center rectangle surrounded by small square panes. Centered on the second and third stories is a flat arched element which encloses a panel of geometric strapwork on the second story and a vertical pair of Queen Anne windows on the third story. Centered atop the pavilion is a tall octagonal clock tower with a domed roof and panelled sides.
A.small pitch-roofed dormer with double windows is centered on each slope of the gabled roof.
(in one paragraph) S.S. Woodcock Jefferson School is historically significant as one of the oldest active schools in East Weymouth. Its impressive scale and siting combine with an inventive design to produce a local architectural landmark. The building thus meets criteria A and C.of the National Register of Historic Places. The school is located on Middie Street (formerly the Central Trail) and is close to the Jackson/ Central Square area at the center of East Weymouth. The building stands on the site of the former Tenth District School, built in 1847. When the district school system was abolished in 1871, a new schoolhouse (Middle Street Schoo1) was built.
By the late 1880''s, that schoolhouse was too small for the growing population of East Weymouth and was replaced by the present structure in 1889. Jefferson School presently serves as the town's Educational Center for the Arts and Sciences. Jefferson School is a limited but inventive adaptation of the Queen Anne style. The pretensions of the architectural concept--particularly evident in the clock tower and the arch motif --are not fully developed, but the vitality of the design is locally remarkable.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 81000114, 19 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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