May 1, 2025
Over the last couple of years, Society volunteers had heard about a Dale Street School file jam-packed with interesting information. Despite searches through multiple filing cabinets, no one could find it. That changed a few weeks ago, when interim co-president Yumi Jones discovered it tucked inside an unrelated folder.
A look inside tells the story of a school that experienced two lives during its 83-year history. For the first 19 years, it operated as Hannah Adams Pfaff High School. Over the following 64 years, the building became Dale Street Elementary School, housing an ever-changing mix of grades 3, 4, 5 and/or 6. For a brief two-year period (1982 to 1984), it was used solely for kindergarten, according to Town Historian Richard DeSorgher.
Documents and photos in the Dale file, along with others filed elsewhere at the Society, illustrate that during its high school years, Hannah Adams Pfaff High School was similar to most high schools of the era. It had baseball and football teams (with its own field; team photo shown), held formal dances and graduations, hosted concerts and community events, and of course, issued report cards.
With school enrollment rising rapidly, a special town meeting on April 28, 1958, authorized the formation of a school building committee “to study the school building needs of the town, and to report to the town concerning construction of new school facilities,” according to a committee report released that October.
In addition to planning a new Junior-Senior High School on Pound Street (opened in 1961), the committee proposed that the existing school on Dale Street serve grades 5 and 6. The report noted that the building would allow “the highly desirable addition of shop and homemaking training into sixth-grade studies.”
Most documents in the Dale Street file relate to expansion planning, while materials concerning the new high school are filed elsewhere at the Society museum. A follow-up October 1958 committee report in the Dale file includes enrollment and cost projections, an analysis of district-wide school space, names of potential architectural firms, summaries of meetings with the State School Building Assistance Commission (now the Massachusetts School Building Authority), and a list of “frequently asked questions” to help inform citizens. The report even references meetings with Dover and Sherborn to explore a possible regional school system.
With architects on board, two prospective designs were created for the addition: a one-level contemporary facility and a two-story version that mirrored the existing school’s Classical architecture (shown). Ultimately, the contemporary design was selected and built in 1963, while the Classical design option was filed away — only to resurface all these years later.
Another elementary school item
The initial committee plan for reconfiguring grades also had Memorial School and North Street School (today’s Pfaff Center) being used for younger students. And while out of place in the Dale Street file, another interesting item discovered with all the others is a Sept. 20, 1952 United Press Photo, “Ten Little Pairs,” depicting 10 sets of Medfield elementary school twins that the district touted as having “the most paired sets per capita than any other school in the nation.”
Additional reading:
https://patch.com/massachusetts/medfield/the-school-your-child-attends-in-medfield
https://hometownweekly.net/medfield/old-town-back-school-education-roots/