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Eliot Hall

Boston Registered Historic Place stubsBoston building and structure stubsBuildings and structures in BostonCommercial buildings completed in 1832Italianate architecture in Massachusetts
Jamaica Plain, BostonNational Register of Historic Places in BostonTheatres on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Eliot Hall Jamaica Plain Boston MA 01
Eliot Hall Jamaica Plain Boston MA 01

Eliot Hall is a historic building at 7A Eliot Street in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston. It is sometimes referred to as "The Footlight Club," after "America's oldest community theatre," which owns and operates out of the building. Originally built in 1832 in Greek Revival/Italianate style, the hall was slated for demolition by the time the club's members purchased it in 1889. Since then it has served for over a century as the organization's home and performance venue. The Trustees of Eliot Hall were formed by the group in the 1980s to oversee renovations to the deteriorating building, saving it from closure, and in 1988 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.Currently, the hall is used as the offices and performance space of The Footlight Club, and is rented out by the club for private functions.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Eliot Hall (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Eliot Hall
Eliot Street, Boston Jamaica Plain

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Latitude Longitude
N 42.310361111111 ° E -71.116055555556 °
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Eliot Hall

Eliot Street 7A
02130 Boston, Jamaica Plain
Massachusetts, United States
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Eliot Hall Jamaica Plain Boston MA 01
Eliot Hall Jamaica Plain Boston MA 01
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Nearby Places

Loring–Greenough House
Loring–Greenough House

The Loring–Greenough House is the last surviving 18th century residence in Sumner Hill, a historic section of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston. It is located at 12 South Street on Monument Square at the edge of Sumner Hill. It is situated on the border of two National Historic Districts (Sumner Hill and Monument Square). This mid-Georgian mansion was built as a country residence and farmstead in 1760 for wealthy British naval officer Commodore Joshua Loring on the original site of John Polley's estate established in the 1650s. Originally, the Loring–Greenough house was situated on a 60-acre (240,000 m2) estate. Loring, a Loyalist prior to the American Revolution, abandoned the house in 1774, just prior to the conflict, and he fled from Boston in 1776. The house was confiscated by colonial forces and in 1776 served as a headquarters for General Nathanael Greene and, soon after, a hospital for Continental Army soldiers following the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1780, the house was sold to Isaac Sears, the rebel leader from New York, and was then purchased in 1784 by Ann Doane, a rich widow, who soon after married David Stoddard Greenough. General William Hyslop Sumner married the widow of David Stoddard Greenough II (Maria Doane Greenough) in 1836 and by the late 1850s the process to subdivide the estate and farmland had begun. The Greenough descendants lived here for five generations until 1924. At that time the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club (until 1993 a ladies'-only club and today a community group) purchased the house, along with almost two acres of landscaped grounds, to preserve it and save it from development. The Loring–Greenough House is a very well preserved structure of almost 4,500 square feet (420 m2), on property that includes sweeping lawns, historic flower beds, handsome trees, and the two-and-one-half-story house itself. The property is fenced and gated; the public is invited to enjoy the grounds during daylight hours, and to attend events inside and outside the House throughout the year. The Tuesday Club has been careful to preserve the house and grounds over many decades. The most recent restoration occurred with a $350,000 grant and included painting and other repairs. The Loring–Greenough property is still owned and operated by the Tuesday Club, which offers tours on Sundays and other programming and events throughout the year. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated both a Massachusetts Landmark and a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 1999.

Mission Hill School

The Mission Hill School was a small preK–8 public pilot school in the Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1997 by Deborah Meier, Elizabeth Knox Taylor, and colleagues, the school was administered by the Boston Public Schools. Meier has publicized the school in many of her works.The Mission Hill School was a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools. The school had a diverse student body of approximately 220 students, with democratic decision-making at the school and classroom levels, a curricular focus on five democratic "Habits of Mind", school-wide thematic units, a strong emphasis on the arts, and graduation from the school upon creating and defending portfolios of student work for a panel of evaluators. Students were admitted to the school based on a lottery, within the choice system of the Boston Public Schools (with consideration given to whether families lived within the "walk zone" and whether a sibling already attended the school, among other factors). Graduates were found to achieve academic success in high school and college at high rates, and the school was studied worldwide for its methodology.In 2002, Meier's book In Schools We Trust included substantial attention to the Mission Hill School. It argued that the current climate of high-stakes testing makes running a school like Mission Hill much more difficult. She also wrote about the school in her books, Will Standards Save Public Education? (2000) Keeping School: Letters to Families from Principals of Two Small Schools (with Ted and Nancy Sizer, 2005), Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground (with Beth Taylor and Brenda Engel, 2010), and Teaching in Themes: An Approach to Schoolwide Learning, Creating Community, and Differentiating Instruction (co-edited with Matthew Knoester, Katherine Clunis D'Andrea). The school is also the focus of the book by Matthew Knoester Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School (2012), as well as the 2014 documentary "Good Morning Mission Hill," directed by Tom and Amy Valens. Mission Hill School published a periodic newsletter for the school community, including reflections by staff, students, and family members; digital copies of some issues of the newsletter are available through the Boston City Archives and the MHS website. The school was controversially moved to a different location within Boston in 2012, despite resistance from the school community.In 2021, the City of Boston settled a lawsuit for over $650,000 with several families regarding unaddressed sexual misconduct against their children from other students. In 2021, BPS removed several administrators and teachers from the school and took over operations after additional allegations. In 2022, following an investigation by law firm Hinckley Allen into allegations of failure to properly address bullying and sexual misconduct between students and neglecting students with disabilities, Boston Public Schools superintendent Brenda Cassellius recommended permanently closing the school at the conclusion of the 2021–2022 academic year. Mayor Michelle Wu and many city officials also voiced their support for closure. Despite organizing efforts by some family members, staff, students, and community members, on May 5, 2022, the Boston School Committee voted 5-0 (with one member abstaining and one member absent) to close the school at the end of the 2021–2022 school year in June 2022. Many Mission Hill School family members, teachers, and students criticized Boston Public Schools' lack of transparency throughout the investigation, falsehoods in the dominant narratives promoted by Boston Public Schools and local media, and the harmful impacts of the decision to close the school. Still other families were in support of the closure.