January 29, 2025 Geri Duff
In 1947 all 5th and 6th grades were transferred to the North School, formerly the Personnel-Training Building of the Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard. Bob Skilling remembers going there in the 1940s and that if the steam plant in the shipyard shut down during the winter, you couldn’t go to school because they sent the steam in pipes under 3A to heat the building. The town paid $2,401 in rent for that first year to the Federal Government. Using eight classrooms with the potential later of using all twelve. Which meant up to 400 students could fit in the building while construction commenced on new schools for the growing population. In 1959 all seventh graders were at North. It was torn down in 1981. This is about 350 Lincoln Street, and you may notice a slight rise in the roadway because at one time there was a bridge that went over the railroad tracks that came from the Ammunition Depot. Photo taken by Mark Duff
Attended in Grade 5. Teacher was Mr. Richio, and a Ms. Antilles. The back playground was mostly rocky and the trains were always going over the tracks behind the fence. My classroom was in front, on the upper far left, with a small office, usually not occupied with exception to a phone, to which I had the job of answering. It was an interesting year, and I didn’t dislike it. It was one of the two years that I didn’t walk to school.
I went to North School for Seventh grade. What a decrepit place! Full of asbestos and gym in the cinder parking lot. Mr. O’Leary’s room decided to knock out the asbestos tiles in the ceiling to make an “O” by the end of the year. Glad I wasn’t in that home room!