Valentine School

Description of the property

The Valentine School (1898-1899)is a two-story, flat-roofed Renaissance Revival style building of red brick and sandstone, capped by a metal entablature. Set well back from thestreet in a wide, Shallow lot now largely covered with asphalt paving, the building remains in excellent structural condition, virtually unaltered since its construction just before the turn of the century. Its neighborhood remains a handsome one, with tree-lined streets and well maintained houses in styles ranging from Greek Revival to Queen Anne. The Valentine-School's well proportioned facade is symmetrical in design. The entrance block at the center projects from the wider block immediately behind it, which in turn is narrower than the rectangular main block of the building stretching across the rear.

sith et consoto kaysone, Tarec lyrabove te a Fadtaddan wihaow with sangrch stone:trim. The strong differentiation between stories, characteristic of the Renaissance Revival style, is carried out in the treatment of the building's front and side elevations. The raised basement and first floor are dis- tinguished by regular recessed courses of brick, which create a rusticated effect in contrast to the smoothness of the wall above. The first floor windows are rectilinear, with square-off stone lintels, while those of the second floor are round-headed, with sandstone-framed arches and sandstone: impost blocks and sills.

The two levels are also marked by horizontal dividing lines: a strip of sandstone between basement and first floor, and a course of brick dentils between first and second stories. A broad red metal entablature, rising to a projecting cornice on scroll modillions, runs around the building on three sides. The rear of the building is less elaborate but also symmetrical. While most of its 36 windows are capped by simple brick segmental arches, a group of four at either end of the second floor has semicircular heads.

Read the complete 2,168-word case file.

Statement of significance

/Architect George P.D. Alderman, Architect Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Valentine School, retains integrity of location, design, setting, naterials, workmanship, feeling, and association. As an outstanding local Revival style architecture designed by a The Valentine School was originally known as the Grape Street School; its name was changed in 1908 to honor a former principal, Willlam Valentine. Designed by George P.D. Alderman, a highly successful Holyoke architect who was responsible for numerous churches, mills, commercial, and civic buildings in western New England, including the main Holyoke Post Office, the school is a sophisticated Renaissance Revival design, the city's finest representative of thatistyle.

Both the elegance of its design the superb craftsmanship of its construction testify to the expansive civic spirit that characterized the last two decades of the 19th century in Chicopee. It was a period that saw the near doubling of the population, the incorporation of Chicopee as a city, and the institution of municipal water and electrical power systems. The Valentine School was located in a residential neighborhood close to the river, but east of the most densely built-up industrial area. At the time of the Valentine School's construction, there was already a school on the block.- the Robinson, built in 1842 and later named for a former principal who went on to become Governor of Massachusetts, the only Chicopee native to serve in that office.

The Valentine School was connected to the older building by underground passage until the demo- lition of the Robinson School in the 1950s. The Valentine School remained in use until 1980, continuing a tradition of public education on the site dating back to the early 19th century and the beginning of Chicopee's growth as an industrial center.