Picture from the 1888 birdseye view of Hopedale. Chapel Street School is in the middle. Draper shops at the lower right. There were no shops at that end of Hopedale Street at that time so you can see a row of houses. This was ten years before the Dutcher Street School was built. It was also well before the Draper Main Office and the fire station were built, so that block looks much different than it does now. The Park House is on Freedom Street at the corner of Dutcher. The Hopedale House is at the top, middle. To the right of it is one of the three octagon houses that once stood in Hopedale.
The chapel, school and library of the Hopedale Community. After the Community days, it was converted into two apartments, and a store was operated out of there also.
Interesting facts on this 1910 Sanborn insurance map include that the grammar school, later known as the Dutcher Street School, had gas lights, while the sub-grammar school, or Chapel Street School, didn’t have any lights. A 1931 map shows that it still didn’t have lights. While the Draper Main Office is shown, it includes a note indicating that it had not been completed by that time.
The pictures above are evidently of a political rally that were sometimes held at the corner of Hopedale and Chapel street when the Draper workers left the shop and office at noon.
Note the second paragraph in the article on the left. It seems to have been a common assumption that the buildings mentioned had been heated by Draper Corporation from the time they were built. From this you can see that didn’t happen before 1938.
Thanks to Art Sanderson for the two photos of the demolition of his childhood home at the corner of Hopedale and Freedom streets. Thanks to Debbie (Grillo) Robbins for the Centennial paper with the picture of the Chapel Street School classroom.
Chapel Street School was in use through the 1954-55 school year, but was closed when Memorial School opened for the 1955-56 school year. Some of the houses William Whitney referred to in the 1964 article above can be seen in the birdseye view at the top of this page.
The Chapel-Hopedale-Freedom-Dutcher Block
The second picture on this page shows the building erected in the 1840s by the Hopedale Community, to be used as both a school and a chapel. It was on what is now Hopedale Street, between Freedom and Chapel. In later years it was converted into a store (in the basement, facing Hopedale Street) and two apartments.
The Community school/chapel, the Chapel Street School and two duplexes on the block were razed in the 1950s. A little of the Dutcher Street School can be seen at the left side of the Chapel Street School in the third picture.
The sepia pictures were labeled “Political Rally.” There’s no more information on this rally, although some sources have mentioned that such events would sometimes be held near the corner of Hopedale and Chapel streets when the workers left the shop at lunchtime.
The bottom picture shows all that remains on the block – the former Dutcher Street School, now the Uncommon Place condominiums.