Felton Street School

The Felton Street School in Hudson, Massachusetts, occupies an irregularly shaped lot on the west side of Felton Street, south of its junction with Russel1 Street. The building stands in a residential area slightly to the north of Hudson's commercial district. It is a free-standing structure 2 1/2 stories high, with brick bearing walls, wooden internal supports and a complex hip-on-hip roof. Elevations are faced with red brick laid up in common bond and trimmed with rock-faced brownstone; the roof is covered with tar and gravel on its upper slope (not visible from ground level), while the lower slopes are covered with slate. Sash throughout the school is wood-frame, consisting of 3/3 at the basement, 6/6 on the north, east and south elevations, and 8/8 on the west elevation.

The schoolhouse was built in two stages; the eastern half of the present structure was built as a four-room school in 1882, the western (rear) half was added in 1901 in the same style as the original building. The main facade (east elevation) is symmetrical about a central gabled pavilion that contains the main entry at ground level and an interior staircase above. The entry contains a metal door with fifteen glass lights flanked by five-pane sidelights (1984) set in a rectangular brick opening and surmounted by a decorative slate roof set on brackets. Above the entry are tripartite windows which are surmounted by a date panel of decorated terracotta tiles (made by the Boston Terra Cotta Works - 1882).

At the attic, the gable contains paired windows set in an ornate brownstone surround with carved volutes. Flanking the central pavillion are two single windows and two sets of tripartite windows per story.

(in one paragraph) Builder Architect Fuller & Delano The Felton Street School possesses integrity of design, materials, workmanship, location and historical associations with the civic development of the town of Hudson, Massachusetts. As the first high school in Hudson, and as a well-preserved example of school architecture with elements of the High the Mationai Register of istoric Places, wits sranificance at the local level. The town of Hudson was originally an agricultural section of the town of Marlborough. Rapid population growth in the 1850s, spurred by the introduction of the railroad and the subsequent arrival of several new firms related to the regional shoe industry, led to the town's incorporation of 1866.

With continued industrial growth and the establishment of nine major factories by 1870, Hudson's immigrant population increased. Most of these new residents were Irish and French Canadian. Large shoe factories and several textile companies were the major elements in Hudson's industrial expansion of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, spurred by the aggressive recruitment of new businesses by the Hudson Board of Trade. Constructed in 1882, the Felton Street School was Hudson's first high school building. It was built at the time of Hudson's conversion to a graded school system, and was one of four schools built in a fifteen year period.

The Street School was one of the largest and most substantially built public buildings in the town during the nineteenth century; the school 's establishment and its enlargement in 1901 reflect the increase in local population that accompanied the development of Hudson's shoe industry in the 1870s and 1880s and the development of the town's rubberized cloth industry in the 1890s and early twentieth century. The school served as a high school until 1957.