The North School House

People who have lived in the North End of Newburyport for a long time or who grew up there might be aware that the brick house at the corner of Kent and Russia streets was once a school but for most area residents this long-ago identity will come as a surprise.  At first glance the building seems to be one of the many historic house that line Kent Street as it rises from the Merrimac to the Ridge, and in scale, form and materials it does not differ markedly from neighboring houses.  However, if you look carefully at the Russia Street end, a patch in the brick work suggests the door that once admitted hundreds of children over a fifty year period.  

Recent research conducted by one of the homeowners and by the Newburyport Preservation Trust documents that the school’s story began in 1805.  In April of that year, at the Annual Meeting of the Town of Newburyport, town records show that the School Committee and Selectmen were authorized to purchase a “suitable place or spot of land for a school house in the north part of the town and to build a brick school house thereon.”  The town then purchased three contiguous lots of land on Kent and Russia Streets and engaged Benjamin Somerby, a joiner, and William Toppan, a mason, to build a one story brick school house of the same size as a then existing school which had been built in 1796 at the southern end of the Bartlett Mall.

In an “Indenture of Agreement” between the five Selectmen and Somerby and Toppan and preserved at the Newburyport Public Library’s Archival Center, the particulars of the building were spelled out.   The walls were to be of “good bricks,” the foundation of stone “well laid.’  The roof was to be “tight.” and covered with “good, seasoned, pine boards and shingles.”  The windows were to have “7 by 9 glass.” On top there was to be a belfry.   

For the students the builders were to provide “good writing benches and seats and all other necessary conveniences, in a strong, plain and decent manner.”  There was to be a “suitable fireplace.”

The Selectmen agreed to pay Somerby and Toppan $1412 for the construction of the school, $712 for the mason and $700 for the joiner.  

The job was to be completed by Sept. but in August plans changed when the town voted to add a second story to the building.  Work continued and the school was soon completed, a two story, brick school house with a large classroom and fireplace on each floor.  Students appear to have entered at the Russia St. end, boys, sometimes as many as eighty, filing to the first floor classroom and girls, when they were educated there, climbing the stairs to the second floor.

For almost fifty years, the North School House endured but by 1854 it was, according to Oliver Merrill’s North End Papers,  “declared unsafe and abandoned for school uses.”  The town sold the building to Albert Currier, a mason, contractor and future mayor of Newburyport who converted it to housing.

As a residence the North School has had its ups and downs, serving as a home to generations of families, enduring a serious fire in 1972, and undergoing several renovations.  In 2013 the building was a featured project on the T.V. series “Flipping Boston,” converted into two condominiums and launched on another phase in its unique history.  

The next time you walk around NBPT@3MPH, take a look at the beautiful features of the house at 35/37 Kent Street.

Ellie Bailey is a researcher for the Newburyport Preservation Trust.  She may be reached at ellebailey@comcast.net