Oak Square School

Architect: Edmund M. Wheelwright
Style: Colonial Revival
City: Boston, MA

Oak Square School is a former public schoolhouse at 35 Nonantum Street in Brighton, designed by Edmund March Wheelwright and built in 1894 on the site of the old Breck Gardens. It gained a major addition in 1923 and stayed in use until 1981, when it closed as the last wood schoolhouse still operating in Boston.

the building

Last wood schoolhouse. When Oak Square School closed in 1981, it was the last wood-frame schoolhouse still in use in Boston, a holdover construction type from an earlier era of the city's school building.

the style

Wheelwright worked here in the Colonial Revival idiom, one of a wide variety of Boston landmark buildings he designed across the city.

the architect

Edmund March Wheelwright designed a wide variety of Boston landmark buildings during his career, of which Oak Square School is one.

significance

Oak Square School was designated a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 1979 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It was converted to housing in 1984, three years after closing as a school.

nearby

Simpson House 0.5 mi · Colonial Revival · 1890
Smith-Peterson House 0.6 mi · Neoclassical · 1902
Reginald A. Fessenden House 0.7 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1919
Samuel Jackson, Jr. House 0.7 mi · Federal · 1760
Brighton Evangelical Congregational Church 0.7 mi · Colonial Revival · 1922
Rawson Estate 0.7 mi · Renaissance Revival · 1860

All 282 buildings in Boston