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So attentive

Mystery lecturer

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out when and where this photo was taken. See it larger.

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I have no idea and I don't see any clues here - but if I were the age of those students (13 +/-?), sitting in a giant room listening to a bearded old man droning on from a chair on a stage, I'd have figured I had died and gone to hell.

So: Hell Middle School - about 1910.

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The girls' skirts are long, the styles of their dresses, and the boy's floppy ties point to sometime in the 1880s-1890s.

Note also: lack of gas lighting or electric lighting in the assembly space.

Ages of children point to this being an assembly of all students in a large school for kids in grades 1-8.

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it was taken around 9:45

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Boston made clock.

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Looks like the assembly hall in the school near St Peter's Parish in Dorchester

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the Mather School?

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The Mather School looks nothing like that. The only room of that size in the Mather School is the gym/auditorium, and it has a completely different orientation/design than the room in the photo.

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they're attentive. They'd get their knuckles whacked with a yardstick if they don't pay attention!

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South Boston High ?

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I know this has to be in Boston, but those arch over double-wide windows were a favorite architectural element of Hartwell and Richardson, and can be seen in the Old Medford High School, Somerville High School, and the old Arlington High School, as well as other institutional and school and church buildings in the area. Their work was very popular from the 1880s to 1900s.

I can't seem to find a matching building in Boston, unless they assembled these younger kids at a High School for some reason.

Here's an example: http://www.booktown.com/stcroixprints/plan.php?id=...

UPDATE: looky here - Austin Primary on Decatur St., designed by Edmund Wheelwright. http://www.booktown.com/stcroixprints/plan.php?id=...

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Thanks for playing, everyone! This is an auditorium in the Henry Pierce School, ca. 1900-1910. The man on the platform is the school's principal, Winslow Warren.

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So close with Hell and Spawn of Satan. I was close on the date though.

Eeka - it's ALWAYS 9:45 in school in Hell!

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I love the way the boys are sitting with the boys and the girls with the girls. No hokey-pokey there! And all the legs crossed at the ankle- such order! Makes me think they are posing for the photo. Looks nothing like the middle school I work in today.

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... in this school.

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