Locke School

Location	Map
Laid Out	1968

Locke School is the name given in the wiki's road data to the driveways of the Locke Middle School at 110 Allen Road in East Billerica. A drive enters from Allen Road, divides into a loop in front of the building and continues east to the south end of Urban Street, which gives a second way in from Baldwin Road. The drives are not a public way and have no record of their own; their history is that of the school.

The school stands on land that was part of a tract of about 73 1/2 acres on the east side of Allen Road owned by John D. Cooke and Ida B. Elfman. A special town meeting on March 19, 1966 voted, 152 to 2, to authorize the selectmen to acquire it "for school purposes" by purchase or eminent domain at not more than $1,000 an acre, and the town bought it for $40,000 by a deed dated July 8, 1966 in the assessors' records. The school was planned for September 1968 as a junior high school for 1,000 pupils. It was first occupied, still incomplete, in December 1968, and a formal dedication was held in the spring of 1969. The school report of 1968 describes "A new Junior High, Cyril D. Locke Junior High School," with 32 class areas, an auditorium seating 550 and a cafeteria seating 300. In September 1971 it became the Locke Middle School, for grades six to eight.

The school, and so the drive, is named for Cyril D. Locke, a Yale graduate who succeeded S. A. Loring as principal of the Howe High School at Christmas 1925 and was principal into the 1950s. He lived from about 1930 to 1960 in the old John Baldwin house at 376 Boston Road, across the street from the Howe School, and died in 1973.

Locke School

Locke School

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