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When Boston had lots of vocational high schools

Mark Bulger introduces us to some of Boston's long gone vocational schools, including one that could never quite decide what it was:

Mechanic Arts high school had a contentious life. The headmaster saw it as a feeder school for M.I.T., while the school department wanted to produce factory workers. In time, the school would be renamed Boston Technical high school, and become a so-called exam school. When I attended in the late 1960s-early 1970s, it was both a college prep school and a shop skill training school.

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Where Mechanic's was is now the Hilton. That little neighborhood south of Boylston, north of Columbus and east of Mass Ave sure has changed.

Cripes

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The only thing "technical" about it by then was that they required mechanical drawing classes. It was an exam school, that drew from all over the city. Kind of a second-tier Boy's Latin.

The building is in Roxbury on Townsend, and currently hosts Latin Academy. Prior to being Boston Tech, it was Roxbury Memorial, and boasted L. "Dapper" O'Neill as one of it's graduates. Old photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofbostonarchives/...

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If you were in the college prep track, you missed something. You could take a year of woodworking, machine shop or sheet metal classes. There was also an electronics course that no one talked about so that it wouldn't be oversubscribed. And of course, there was the printing program.

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I was under the impression that Boston Mechanics HS became Boston Technical HS became the School of Mathematics & Science, aka the third Boston exam school (at least, this is what the staff&students at the O'Bryant told me when I was checking out the school a couple months ago).

Btw, when I was at the Tute in the early 80s, you still saw the occasional undergrad proudly wearing a "Boston Tech" sweatshirt, so the recent name must have happened sometime after that (too lazy to google).

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Yes, Boston Tech merged with the Mario Umana. A few years later, the name was changed to the O'Bryant

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