The Lancaster Industrial School for Girls was a

reform school A reform school was a penal institution, generally for teenagers mainly operating between 1830 and 1900. In the United Kingdom and its colonies reformatories commonly called reform schools were set up from 1854 onwards for youngsters who wer ...

on Old Common Road in

Lancaster, Massachusetts Lancaster is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the United States. Incorporated in 1653, Lancaster is the oldest town in Worcester County. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 8,441. History In 1643 Lancaster was first ...

. It was the country's first state reform school for girls, opening on August 26, 1856. The facility provided its charges with separate rooms, arranged in three-story cottages with kitchen, dining, and other public facilities on the ground floor, rooms for the girls and a housemother on the second, and space for teachers on the third floor. This school paved the way of social reform, moving away from child imprisonment towards a correctional paradigm. This was in part achieved because of the observed benefits of environmental change in children, as well as the importance of education plus the added pressures of having to deal with the rise in child delinquency brought by social changes of the industrial age. After its closure in 1975, it was redeveloped into

Massachusetts Correctional Institution - Lancaster The Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Lancaster (MCI-Lancaster) was a minimum security prison for men located in Lancaster, Massachusetts in the United States on the site of the former Lancaster Industrial School for Girls. When operati ...

. The campus was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1976.

Campus

The Lancaster School's campus is located southeast of the town center, on of landscaped terrain between Old Common Road (to the south) and Still River Road (

Massachusetts Route 110 Route 110 is a southwest–northeast state route in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Route 110’s western terminus is at a concurrency of Route 12 and Route 140 in West Boylston, and its eastern terminus is at the junction of U.S. 1 and Rou ...

) to the north. The campus includes eighteen historic buildings, dating from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Many of its purpose-built buildings from this period are of brick construction, and most of those date to the period of the school's founding in the 1850s. There are three wood-frame buildings on the campus from the 18th century, all farmhouses which were standing when the state acquired the land. These buildings were used by the school for staff housing and offices. A number of the buildings are residential "cottages", which had common spaces on the ground floor, and sleeping arrangements for both students and staff. The common spaces included a dining room, kitchen, sewing room, laundry, parlor, and classroom.

References

Sources

*Places Where Women Made History, National Park Service, available at: http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/ma43.htm *Lancaster Industrial School For Girls: A Social Portrait of a Nineteenth-century Reform School for Girls, Barbara Brenzel, available at JSTOR *Daughters of the State: A Social Portrait of the First Reform School for Girls in North America, 1856-1905, Barbara Brenzel {{DEFAULTSORT:Lancaster Industrial School For Girls Historic districts in Worcester County, Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Lancaster, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Worcester County, Massachusetts Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Juvenile detention centers in the United States 1790 establishments in Massachusetts

Campus

See also

References

Sources