VP TO DA TE. 515 



committee urged upon the town the need of a large cen- 

 tral building and the abandonment of the old ones. Ed- 

 ward F. Ripley, E. Pomeroy Collier, Joseph S. Bigelow, 

 Grenville D. Braman, and Herbert O. Beale of the com- 

 mittee signed the report, which contained the following 

 paragraphs : — 



We would this year call the attention of our townspeople to 

 the advantages of a large central school building, containing the 

 North Grammar and Primary, Center Grammar and Primary, South 

 Grammar and Primary, and the Harbor and Elm Street schools. 

 Provision must be made before another year for our high school, 

 which will have more pupils in 1889 than it can possibly accom- 

 modate. The Center, Elm Street, Harbor, and North primary 

 schools barely accommodate this year's pupils. In some in- 

 stances, in years past, we are told that owing to the crowded con- 

 dition of certain primary schools some of the pupils had to be ad- 

 vanced to the grammar schools one year before they were qualified 

 to enter, thus completely disarranging our whole plan for grading 

 the schools. 



Now we claim that our North, South, Center, and Harbor school 

 property could be disposed of for a good round sum, especially 

 the North, which is a valuable piece of property for building, be- 

 ing situated at the junction of the Jerusalem Road, and that a 

 building of ten rooms could be built, designed according to the 

 latest and best ideas in schoolhouse construction, with perfect 

 ventilation, comfortably and economically heated by furnace or 

 steam heat, an ornament to the town, and, best of all, a school 

 where scholars could be perfectly graded, and where all the teach- 

 ers and scholars would be under the direct supervision of one 

 man. 



But an enterprise so big had never yet been undertaken 

 by the town. All sorts of objections were raised ; children 

 would have to be conveyed in barges, costing more money. 

 Large and small children gathered in such a crowd on 

 one playground seemed perilous to some parents. The call 

 for ventilation and other modern sanitary improvements 



