Centre Schoolhouse (River Street)

The Centre Schoolhouse on River Street was the school of Billerica Centre from 1870 until the Pollard School opened in 1892. It stood on the north side of River Street, the road to Carlisle, a short way west of Boston Road, on a lot of 4,950 square feet that is now part of 5 River Street. The town built it on the foundation of the Universalist Church, and after the school closed the building became Gardner Parker Hall.

The lot was cut from the land of Joel Richardson, who had bought the three-acre corner of the Boston and Carlisle roads in 1838 (see Joseph Locke House). The First Universalist Society, formed in January 1842, had already laid the underpinning wall of its meetinghouse when Richardson deeded it the lot on April 25, 1842 for $213: 90 feet on the road and 55 feet deep, measured from "a point just five feet Easterly of the Southeasterly corner of the under pinning wall erected by said Society for a meeting house thereon." The society agreed to build and keep up "a good and sufficient board fence" on the lines between the lot and Richardson's land. Its church stood there until 1868, when, Hazen wrote, "it was sold to the Roman Catholics and removed to North Billerica," where it became Saint Andrew's Roman Catholic Church.

In its report for 1868-69 the School Committee found that neither building used by the old Districts Nos. 1 and 2 was "fit for its purpose." It proposed uniting the two schools and recommended "the removal of this building," the District No. 1 schoolhouse on Pages Court, "to a point somewhere farther north, as being more central for the united district, or the construction of a new building." The town gave up its school districts that year. On February 24, 1870 the Universalist Society, by Gardner Parker and its standing committee, sold the empty lot to the town for $250, "the former underpinning wall of the meeting house formerly standing on said premises" still marking its bounds, and two days later the old district conveyed its Pages Court lot to the town as well (see Centre Schoolhouse (Pages Court)). The new Centre Schoolhouse was built on the old church foundation. The Pages Court lot was sold in 1871 "with the buildings thereon," and a building still stood there in 1875, so the River Street school was most likely a new building rather than the old one moved, but the records do not say.

The school had two rooms, the Centre Grammar School and the Centre Primary School, and the 1875 map of the Centre labels it "School No. 1." In 1890 the School Committee wrote that its location "has long been a source of dissatisfaction and worriment": "There being no play-ground, the children are obliged to have recourse to the public street," and River Street had become "the principal thoroughfare to the railroad station." The town voted a new schoolhouse at the Centre, the Pollard School, which opened in March 1892.

The old schoolhouse was sold at auction by George E. Stearns, auctioneer. On March 30, 1892 the selectmen, Edward B. Haskell, Alden A. Dane and John C. Rowell, deeded the lot to J. Nelson Parker for $1,350, "together with the old district school building standing thereon," and on April 30 Parker passed it at the same price to the Billerica Building Association, newly incorporated to turn the building into a public hall. As Gardner Parker Hall it served for town meetings and later the Odd Fellows. After the hall burned in 1940, the association sold the lot to Dr. A. Warren Stearns "together with the remains of the old district school building standing thereon." The land became part of the Stearns property at the corner of River Street and Boston Road, where the Samuel Ruggles House was moved in 1972.

References

1. School Committee Report, 1890
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), churches chapter: the Universalist meetinghouse "on the north side of West Street, where the school-house now stands"
3. Billerica annual report 1892: the new schoolhouse at the Centre; "of G. E. Stearns, auctioneer, in part for schoolhouse sold, $250"

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.