Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Girls’ High School (Boston, Massachusetts)

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Type
  
Public

Affiliation
  
Boston Public Schools

Campus
  
Urban

Date founded
  
September 1852

Girls’ High School (Boston, Massachusetts)

Established
  
September 1852 (1852-09)

Headquarters
  
Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Girls' High School was a high school that was located in Roxbury, Boston. It was founded in 1852 by a group including Dr. LeBaron Russell. It was initially located above a public library in the former Adams schoolhouse on Mason Street.

Contents

In 1869, construction began for a purpose-built school building, located on Newton Street between Tremont and Shawmut Avenue. That building was designed for just under 1000 students, with 8 classrooms, 15 recitation rooms, 3 studios, chemical, physical, and botanical laboratories, and a hall, as well as facilities dedicated to the Girls' Latin School. This building was formally dedicated on April 19, 1871. By 1903, the high school's share of this space was described as insufficient in the Boston Globe.

The school became coeducational in the latter half of the 20th century. By spring 1974, the school housed 500 female students and 200 male students. That spring, the Boston School Committee voted to change the school's name to Roxbury High School. This name was the most popular among petitioning students.

Roxbury High closed in 1981

Notable alumnae

  • Jennie Loitman Barron, attorney and judge (Class of 1907)
  • Marcella Boveri, biologist and first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Harriet E. Caryl, teacher at Girls High School for 48 years (Class of 1855)
  • Melnea Cass, civil rights activist
  • Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson, educator
  • Mildred Davenport, dancer and dance instructor
  • Margaret Foley, labor activist, suffragist, and social worker
  • Jessie G. Garnett, first African-American woman dentist in Boston
  • Sophie Chantal Hart, professor of English at Wellesley College (Class of 1887)
  • Pauline Hopkins, novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor
  • Helen C. White, professor of English at University of Wisconsin–Madison (Class of 1913)
  • Heads of school

  • Loring Lothrop, 1852-1856
  • William Seavey, 1856-1868
  • Ephraim Hunt, 1868-1872
  • Samuel Eliot, 1872-1876
  • Homer B. Sprague, 1876-1885
  • John Tetlow, 1885-
  • References

    Girls’ High School (Boston, Massachusetts) Wikipedia