Old Rockville High School and East School

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Old Rockville High School and East School

Old Rockville High School (1922 postcard).jpg

Old Rockville High School
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Location School and Park Streets, Rockville, Connecticut
Coordinates 41°52′08″N72°26′52″W / 41.8688°N 72.4478°W / 41.8688; -72.4478 Coordinates: 41°52′08″N72°26′52″W / 41.8688°N 72.4478°W / 41.8688; -72.4478
Area 1.6 acres (0.65 ha)
Built 1870 (1870)
Architect Francis R. Richmond
Architectural style Italianate, Romanesque Revival
NRHP reference # 81000614 [1]
Added to NRHP April 27, 1981

The Old Rockville High School and East School are a pair of historic former school buildings at School and Park Streets in the Rockville section of Vernon, Connecticut. Built in 1892 and 1870 respectively, the two buildings are good examples of late 19th-century school architecture, and the former high school is a particularly good example of Richardsonian Romanesque design. The buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. [1] The high school now houses school administration offices, and the East School houses court offices.

Rockville, Connecticut Census-designated place in Connecticut, United States

Rockville is a census-designated place and a village of the town of Vernon in Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 7,474 at the 2010 census. Incorporated as a city in 1889, it has been consolidated with the town of Vernon since 1965.

Vernon, Connecticut Town in Connecticut, United States

Vernon is a town in Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 29,179 at the 2010 census. Vernon contains the smaller villages of Rockville, Talcottville and Dobsonville.

Richardsonian Romanesque Romanesque Revival architectural style, named for Henry Hobson Richardson

Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston (1872–1877), designated a National Historic Landmark. Richardson first used elements of the style in his Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane in Buffalo, New York, designed in 1870.

Contents

Description and history

The Old Rockville High School and East School are located in the commercial downtown area of Rockville, on the north side of School Street extending eastward from the junction with Park Street. The high school is located at the corner, while the East School is separated from that building by a parking lot and parking garage. The high school is an asymmetrical masonry structure, built mainly out of red brick with granite trim. It exhibits most of the elements typical of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, including large round-arch openings, bands of windows headed by stone lintels, and a four-story pyramidal tower. The East School is also of brick construction, but is considerably more plain, with a paired brackets in its gabled eaves, and a portico supported by paneled posts rising to rounded arches. [2]

The old high school in 2016 VernonCT SchoolAdministrationBuilding.jpg
The old high school in 2016

The East School was built in 1870, during a period of rapid growth in Rockville caused by the post-Civil War economic boom, and was designed to relieve crowding pressure on smaller district schools. The high school was built in 1892, to a design by Francis Richmond of Springfield, Massachusetts. The era in which it was built also coincided with Rockville's continuing economic prosperity, and was built to provide a higher level of education called for by the area's employers. Although it was state of the art at the time of its construction, it served the town as a high school only until 1924, and now houses school administrative offices. [2]

Springfield, Massachusetts City in Massachusetts

Springfield is a city in the state of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern Mill River. As of the 2010 Census, the city's population was 153,060. As of 2017, the estimated population was 154,758, making it the third-largest city in Massachusetts, the fourth-most populous city in New England after Boston, Worcester, and Providence, and the 12th-most populous in the Northeastern United States. Metropolitan Springfield, as one of two metropolitan areas in Massachusetts, had a population of 692,942 as of 2010.

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Tolland County, Connecticut Wikimedia list article

This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Tolland County, Connecticut.

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