Worcester Academy - Towers Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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XV.-XLKER HAl,L

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.Aw ,4 ' K- ,mia .. , . ,ig,.-, .T '15 199555 S3E? .L' 3Rinetp years Gntnarh IN 1834, on a farm facing what is now Main Street, approximately opposite the present location of Piedmont Church, were erected three buildings, the home of the Worcester County Manual Labor High School. The manual labor was done by students who worked on the farm in part payment of their board at the rate of eight cents-or less-per hour. These boys dined at tables separate from those 2CCup1ed by the boys who paid cash, but received substantially the same fare except that their table was not supplied with doughnuts. Tuition was 35.00 to 36.00 per term, room rent 82.00 per term, and board 81.20 per week. For twenty years the Academy continued in this location, meanwhile selling portions of its land to the railroads which came to stir the mechanical-minded students in the early forties. I' From. 1854 to 1869 the school led a first precarious and later more stable existence in ai new location at the corner of Belmont and Summer Streets, near What is now Lincoln Square. In 1869'Mr. Isaac Davis, who had been president of the Board of Trustees since the founding of the Academy, contributed largely from his private purse, and enabled the school to purchase the abandoned Dale General Hospital, the present Davis Hall. Built about 1850, the old hall had housed successively the Worcester Med1cal'College, and the Ladies Collegiate Institute-which added the north and south wings-, and had been a United States hospital for Massachusetts soldiers In the Civil War. From 1869 to 1880 the Academy occupied Davis Hall as a co- educational schoolg then girls were no longer admitted to the boarding department, and Worcester Academy soon became exclusively a boys' preparatory institution. In 1882 there came to head the school a man whose name is written large in Academy history, Daniel Webster Abercrombie, better known, like the immortal Arnold of Rugby, as The Doctor. Space does not permit a fitting tribute to the lman, but merely a tabulation of the additions which he made to the material equlpment of the school. Walker Hall was built in 1890, and named in honor of the President of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Joseph H. Walker. In 1892 Dexter Hall and Adams were completed. The Kingsley Laboratories were dedicated in 1897, an addition which gave a scientific equipment unsurpassed. The Megaron, the living room and later the treasure-house of the school's memories, was com- Pleted in 1905. In 1912 Gaskill Field provided' a more ample playing space in one Of the most attractive and best appointed fields to be found in the possession of a Preparatory school. The last, and to all boys old and new the crowning addition, Was the gymnasium, finished in 1915. Under the guidance of one principal the Academy had expanded from Davis Hall alone until it occupied the buildings and grounds which constitute its present material equipment. S In 1918 the Academy came under the guidance of the present headmaster, I amuel Foss Holmes. What Worcester has achieved and is under his leadership, Ct this book bear witness. 11

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THE MEGARON