Vining School Driveway

"Vining School" is the entrance drive of the former Eugene C. Vining School at 121 Lexington Road, in the Nuttings Lake section, between Doyle Avenue and Gordon Terrace. It is not a named street: it leaves the west side of Lexington Road, runs about 130 feet west and turns south for about 210 feet into the 13-acre school lot. It was built with the school, which opened in September 1957.

The site was chosen by the annual town meeting of 1955, which voted $13,000 to acquire "certain land located on Lexington Road, containing 13 acres, more or less," Lot 1 on a plan surveyed for the 1954 Elementary School Building Committee by James B. Monahan in January 1955, and authorized the selectmen to buy it or take it by eminent domain. The selectmen took the land by eminent domain that year, and the plan was recorded on October 5, 1955 (Plan Book 86, Plan 96). It shows Lot 1 between Lexington Road and land of Innis, near Manning Road, with a strip on the line of the paper street Roosevelt Drive running west to the Middlesex Turnpike; in 1961 the town voted a sidewalk on the turnpike "from the Causeway to the Walkway of the Vining School." The assessors record the taking as from Neil J. Kennedy, who had owned land on Lexington Road and Manning Road since 1929.

Planned as the Nuttings Lake School, the building was "complete and ready for use with the start of the fall term" of 1957 as the Eugene C. Vining School. Its namesake, Eugene C. Vining (A.B. Bowdoin, A.M. Tufts), taught at the Howe School and was principal of the high school before the School Committee appointed him Superintendent of Schools in 1915; he retired in 1941 and served again as acting superintendent in the mid-1940s. In 1957 the highway department cleaned up "Lexington Road shoulder adjacent to Vining School." The school was closed in 2019 because of structural deficiencies, and many of its pupils were moved to the Ditson School. On October 3, 2019 the town meeting transferred the property from the School Committee to the selectmen, and on June 20, 2020 it voted $5,000,000 to demolish the Old Ditson and Vining Schools; the Vining building was being demolished in 2021. The ball fields on the site remained in use, and in 2024 the town chose 121 Lexington Road as the site of a new recreation center.

References

1. Billerica report 1915: School Committee appoints E. C. Vining Superintendent of Schools
2. Billerica report 1941: Superintendent's report, the retirement of Mr. Vining
3. Billerica report 1955: appropriations, Art. 60, land for elementary school, Nuttings Lake, $13,000
4. Billerica report 1955: Selectmen, land on Lexington Road taken by eminent domain for the Nuttings Lake School
5. Billerica report 1957: highway work, Lexington Road shoulder adjacent to Vining School
6. Billerica report 1957: the new Eugene C. Vining School ready for the fall term
7. Billerica report 1961: sidewalk on Middlesex Turnpike from the Causeway to the Walkway of the Vining School
8. FY2020 Annual Report: Vining School closed because of structural deficiencies; precincts moved
9. FY2020 Annual Report: Oct. 3, 2019 Art. 36, Vining School property transferred to the Board of Selectmen
10. FY2020 Annual Report: June 20, 2020 Art. 24, $5,000,000 to demolish the Old Ditson and Vining Schools

Deed References Expand all

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