Archive of a bi-weekly newspaper column on vernacular architecture, written for the Lawrence, MA Eagle-Tribune, from 1988-1999. In 1994, the column received a Massachusetts Historic Preservation Award.
A Note of Thanks
This column would not exist if Dan Warner, editor of the Eagle-Tribune, hadn't taken a chance on me and my ideas.
Features editor Mary Fitzgerald then helped shape the column by giving me 2 rules: Remember that the Sunday paper is entertainment, and use only one word per column which has to be looked up in a dictionary. I am deeply grateful for Mary's superb guidance in suggesting that we add maps, encouraging me to keep rewriting when I floundered, and especially supporting me when I began to write about the whole Valley.
In 1999, I stopped writing the column in order to devote more time to my aging parents.
Features editor Mary Fitzgerald then helped shape the column by giving me 2 rules: Remember that the Sunday paper is entertainment, and use only one word per column which has to be looked up in a dictionary. I am deeply grateful for Mary's superb guidance in suggesting that we add maps, encouraging me to keep rewriting when I floundered, and especially supporting me when I began to write about the whole Valley.
In 1999, I stopped writing the column in order to devote more time to my aging parents.
#91 John R. Rollins School, Prospect Hill, Lawrence
Architect designed school especially for young children
When the Rollins School on Prospect Hill was built in 1892, James Cunningham, a retired sea captain, owned the land. He moved a house from the site so the school could be built.
George C. Adams was the architect. I like his work, so I regularly stop to see this school of brick with granite arches and lintels and copper panels. One day I was admiring the row of circles above the arch at the main door. Each circle is really 3, one cut inside the other, like a bull's eye. I realized the shape was one easily understood by a child. Then I saw that Mr. Adams had designed the building especially for children.
The Rollins School could have been intimidating. It is big and tall. But its sections are broken into manageable sizes by the separate hip roofs and the massing of the windows. The wings are simple rectangles and the places of emphasis - the clock and the entrance - are set off by half circles, all easy shapes for children.
The school sits high above Platt Street to the left, but the main entrance is up a gentle walk from Howard Street. The granite arch over the main door is massive, strong enough to carry the weight of the tower above. But its shape is simple, a half circle, and it is low. The arch sits - visually - on the granite which bands gteh school. At the entry porch, the banding is about 2 feet high, just right for a child to touch. A child who standing there is within the arch, not dwarfed by it.
The arch was built to a child's measure. From within the space a child can look out and see across the city and beyond. What a great symbol for a school: to protect while providing the vantage point for seeing the world.
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