Marshall Middle School Driveway

Location	Map
Laid Out	1972

Marshall Middle School Driveway is the entrance drive of the Dr. Orland S. Marshall Middle School, which runs south from Floyd Street for about 450 feet to the school, east of the old Boston and Maine Railroad line in North Billerica. The school stands on about 37 acres that the annual town meeting voted unanimously on March 26, 1968 to buy for school purposes for $70,000: land of Raphael J., Natalie G. and Gwendolyn H. Murphy "lying east of the B and M R.R. and south of Floyd Street," less a strip of frontage on Floyd Street 200 feet deep. In 1969 the town appropriated money for plans of "a Middle School on Floyd Street." A special town meeting on February 10, 1970 lost its quorum before voting the construction money, but another special town meeting that spring voted to build, and work began at once; the town borrowed $5,950,000 for the "Floyd Street School." The 1970 warrant also asked for a storm drain in Floyd Street "from the entrance of the New Middle School to Boston Road."

On September 30, 1970 the Permanent School Building Committee voted to name the school for Dr. Orland S. Marshall, the retired school physician, who took part in the ground breaking. Dr. Marshall had been school physician from 1926 to 1967 and a member of the Board of Appeal from 1945 to 1950; he died on September 29, 1971, at 74. When the town set up its middle schools in September 1971, the Marshall Middle School began on a curtailed schedule because of double sessions, and its own building was completed and opened in September 1972 with 1,500 pupils in grades 6, 7 and 8. The high school football games were to be played at the Marshall School from 1973, and the school is still in use.

Marshall Middle School Driveway

Marshall Middle School Driveway

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