Rindge Technical School - Brownie Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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1932 RINDGE TECH BROWNIE THE NEW RINDGE TECH BUILDING S OUR BOOK goes to press, our dream, the New Rindge, is beginning to take form. Anyone who has visited the main office during the last four months has been confronted with a mass of plans, blueprints, etc. Our headmaster has labored long and hard to make the new school the best in the land. The building will contain about eighty-five classrooms, several offices, a gym- nasium, an auditorium (which will seat fifteen hundred people), a cafeteria on the top floor, and many other modern conveniences which students at the Cambridge Manual Training School, the ancestor of Rindge Technical School, would be at a loss to understand. The rooms will be connected by a telephone system. In the auditorium there will be a motion picture machine equipped for sound productions for visual education. The stage will have all the appurtenances for presenting dramatics and other forms of entertainment. When we return in future years, it will be as a stranger to a new city. We will be proud to have graduated from a set of buildings rich with tradition, but we will also be glad that these antiquated buildings have been replaced by the beautiful building as pictured above. cA 11

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RINDGE TECH BROWNIE 1932 SS 1888 was with but one building, which we have always called the “Shop Building.” At first no academic work was carried on here, all the boys marching with military precision to the old English High School. In these early years the school was famous as an experiment station in a new kind of education, the technical education. Equally famous were the men who guid- ed its destinies at this critical period. Among these might be mentioned, in addition to Mr. Rindge, the Honorable William E. Russell, the father of our present mayor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Harry Ellis, the first Head Master of the School. In 1892 the school was established firmly enough to warrant the addition of a second building. Thus it was that the building we knewas the “Science Building,” was erected in the rear of the “Shop Building” and was connected to the latter structure by a covered passageway. Three years later the school met with an irreparable loss through the death of Harry Ellis, who had, combined with extraordinary executive ability, a deep under- standing of the needs of the boys who attended the school. The first phase in the history of the School closes in 1898 when Mr. Rindge relinquished control. The transfer was accomplished without any loss of efficiency. In recognition of our debt to the founder, the name of the School was changed from the “Cambridge Manuai Training School” to the “Rindge Manual Training School.” It is not easy to put in figures the amount of the gifts which Mr. Rindge made to his city and to the boys who benefited by them, but after the buildings were erected and equipped, for ten years he maintained the school at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars each year. In 1902 a new school building was erected on the Rindge School Playground, for the classes of the old Washington School, which stood on Brattle Street. When the building was erected it was understood that as the Rindge School grew, the new building would be occupied by its students. In 1905 the Washington School was transferred to the new Houghton Building, and the Technical School came into full possession of the Washington Building. Three years ago the two dwelling houses adjoining the Washington Building were acquired and next the home of former Mayor Wardwell, all of which housed classes up to this memorable year. To meet the demanids of education in the ever increasing field of technical work, it has been necessary to add entirely new courses to the curriculum and to radically revise some of the old ones. Such changes have been made as quickly as it became clear that developments in the industrial field warranted such additions. This mod- ernizing of instruction means not only a broader training of distinctly high school grade, but also means a wider choice of vocations for the students of the school. All of the modern changes have taken place under the watchful and foreseeing eve of our present Head Master John W. Wood, who more than measures up to the standard set by Mr. Rindge himself in his appointing of Harry Ellis. The history of Rindge fully justifies the hopes of its founder, Mr. Rindge. It is true that the school has changed but such changes have come in response to the changes in the life of the community and in spite of these changes, the school con- tinues faithfully to carry out the purposes for which it was founded. FAREWELL TO OLD RINDGE! HAIL, NEW RINDGE! CH «10 «(RD

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1932 RINDGE TECH BROWNIE Mr. JOHN WILLIAM Woop Re mH 12