The first schoolhouse in the Town of Chelsea was a one
story brick building built in the Centre district (now Revere). The
travel distance created undue hardship on students coming from the
Pratt farm, Cary farm or the Ferry Village areas. A school meeting
was held at the Chelsea House, on April 10, 1833, at this meeting the
Ferry Village was declared a school district. A building committee
was appointed and authorized to build a school-house.
A lot of land was leased from the Ferry Company, on
Washington Avenue and the corner of Chestnut Street (about the area
of Chelsea Hebrew School). This lot was chosen so as to favor the
travel of students from the Pratt farm as well as the Ferry Village.
A one story, one room, wooden building, the first school-house to be
built in Chelsea (of today), was erected and dedicated in the year 1833.
In 1845, a second, and identical, one room school-house was
erected on Shawmut Street. Ten years later, 1855, it was moved to
Shurtleff and Middlesex (Congress Ave.) Streets and then to Walnut
Street near Fourth Street. In 1857, a room was added doubling the
school’s length. The school was on the move again. It was moved, in
1860, to Walnut and Fifth Street, to make room for the new Boy’s
Grammar (Williams) School. The school was then cut into two rooms,
one room going to Bellingham Street, the other, the original room,
going to Vogel (Forsyth) Street. This room was used as a school on
this site until the building of the Carter School in 1868.
Up for sale, the school was bought by Frank B. Fay,
ex-mayor of Chelsea, who moved it to the corner of Hawthorn Street
and Congress Avenue. The building remained at this location until
about 1900, when Mr. Fay’s widow presented it to the Margaret Corbin
Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) of Chelsea. The
DAR set it up as a museum of the typical American one room
schoolhouse, under the name, “Ye Olde Skule Hous.” It was
then presented to the city and moved to the Carter School yard, to
remain as a part of Chelsea’s early history.
A completely new, larger, Carter School was constructed, in
1917, on the old Carter School and firehouse site on Forsyth Street.
” Ye Olde Schule Haus” made it’s last move, this time, into oblivion.