Peabody School Becomes Reality As Monday May See Ground Broken-This Day In Norwood History-March 21, 1941

Building Designed To Harmonize With Senior High; Plan Permits Flexibility Of School Curricula

There is a possibility that ground for the new Henry 0. Peabody Vocational School for Girls may be broken on Monday. While no contracts have been made as yet, bids on excavation work are due in today. The new school is to be a part of the Norwood Public School System. When the Memorial structure is completed and equipped the town is to receive each year the net income of the Peabody fund as an endowment.

The new structure, with outside dimensions of 58 feet by 116 feet, will be connected to the High School by a one-story corridor The architect’s drawing of the vocational school shows a structure whose architecture follows that of the present school building and whose design is subordinated to and harmonious with it The design, drawn by Harry Korslund, has been approved by Perry, Shaw and Hepburn, consulting architects.

The building will be colonial in style with a collonade at its entrance. Its outside walls will be of water struck brick, its roof of slate. The building will be practically fireproof except for the roof Floors will be carried on beams and columns rather than on partitions, so that partitions may be moved at any time without interfering with the structure.

The latter fact allows for maximum flexibility necessary because the school’s proposed curricula are not ironbound and definite. This same allowance for elasticity in building plan and curricula conformity is made throughout the school plans.

Such allowance is necessary, Superintendent of Schools Lincoln D. Lynch explains, both because student demands on curricula cannot be accurately gauged until the school has been in operation and because the Peabody school will be different from any other trade school hereabouts.

For the local school, open to Norwood girls and students from surroundings communities, will offer threefold service placement, follow up, and instruction. It will seek to make it possible for any girl to persue any course of instruction which will be profitable to her yet not too expensive to maintain.

(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)