Partly to mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable..

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable.

Years ago — sometime before 1980 — a friend and I were walking up Bartlet Street headed for the Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy when we passed the Stowe School.

He said, “What an ugly pile of bricks that building is!”

I looked at him and said, “Of all the schools I have attended in Andover, that one is by far my favorite! Dare I say I loved that grand pile of bricks!”

The rest of the walk was all about Stowe School and my sixth-grade year there in 1960-1961.

West Andover was the fastest growing area in town after WWII and we Baby Boomers were filling up the old schoolhouses faster than the town could build new ones. West School with seven rooms and Central School with twenty classrooms both open in 1952.

I entered West in 1954 and by the time I reached sixth grade, even with a seven-room addition, the school was again overcrowded. So the two sixth grades were bused up-town to Stowe to join the three other sixth grade classes from Central. Stowe was the oldest school still in use. It opened its doors in 1895 and had not changed much in sixty-five years.

The building looked more like a Gothic Castle with its two pointed towers flanking either side of the building.

The double entrances on the front were designed as separate entrances, on the left for boys and girls on the right, but by 1960 we all entered through the left. There were five granite steps up to the porch then one more through two massive wooden doors with windows to let light into a small vestibule. Two lower rise steps up through another set of twin doors took us into a central hallway.

The floors were all wooden, with bead board wainscoting about four feet up the walls followed by plastering to the 12 ft. ceilings. It smelled old and the floors creaked under foot.

Once in the central hallway, the boys and girls briefly parted company. The towers held the well-worn stairways to the second and third floors and the basement where the bathrooms were located. The boys had rights to the left and the girls had theirs to the right.

There were six classrooms, three on each floor and mine was upstairs in room 5 on the northeast corner overlooking Central School next door and the Playstead to the rear.

We didn’t have lockers — just a coat enclosure with hooks hung on the wall outside the class room. A shallow shelf above held a lunch box and a place below for boots. Each classroom had one wall of five tall double hung windows that opened at the bottom or top. There was an eight-foot pole with a small brass hammer like head that inserted into a brass hole at the top of window for adjusting the flow of fresh air into the room. This was a coveted chore done daily by a chosen student when the room was too hot and to keep us from dozing off. Two more windows facing east with a door out to a metal fire escape which was perfect for clapping chalk out of the felt erasers used on the slate blackboards. Four pendant lights hung down from the ceiling on chains with white fishbowl style glass shades.

There were six rows of dark stained wooden desks, five desks per row, all bolted firmly to the floor with cast iron legs. The slanted top opened to store your books in and on top was a flat area grooved to hold pencils from falling off and a round hole where the inkwell sat. Another coveted perk was filling them if you got your work done in a timely manner.

Your guide to the summer treasures of the North of Boston and Merrimack Valley regions

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