Horace Belden School
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The Horace Belden School and Central Grammar School are a pair of architecturally distinguished
Late Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
occupying a single campus at 933 Hopmeadow Street and 29 Massaco Street in
Simsbury, Connecticut Simsbury is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 24,517 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The town was incorporated as Connecticut's 21st town in May 1670. History ...
. The Belden School was built in 1907 as the first Simsbury High School, and now serves as Simsbury Town Hall. The Central Grammar School, built in 1913, is now called the Central School. The buildings were listed as a pair 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 1993 for their architecture and their role in the town's educational system.


Description and history

The two school buildings are located north of Simsbury's central business district, on a parcel of land bounded on the north by Massaco Street and the east by Hopmeadow Street (
United States Route 202 U.S. Route 202 (US 202) is a spur route of US 2. It follows a northeasterly and southwesterly direction stretching from Delaware to Maine, also traveling through the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massa ...
), with commercial property occupying the street corner. Both are two-story buildings, with
ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...
brownstone walls, and predominantly Gothic Revival styling. The former Belden School, now Town Hall, faces Hopmeadow Street. It has its main entrance in a Gothic-arched recess, and has bands of sash windows topped by transom windows set into separate openings. There are broad projecting sections in several parts of the facade, and large gabled dormers with slightly flared roof lines projecting from the hip roof. The main section of the school was built in 1907, with an additions in 1927 and 1961. It has served as the town hall since 1983. and 3 The Central School faces north to Massaco Street. Its original section, built in 1913, is L-shaped, and also has entrances set in Gothic openings. Its roof gables are adorned with parapets. Unlike the Belden School building, whose interior has been extensively altered, its interior retains many original finishes. A Colonial Revival extension was added in 1949-50. Both schools came about through the financial support of Horace Belden, a Simsbury native whose grandfather had made a fortune in merchant trade with the
West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...
. Belden's philanthropy, in addition to funding the schools, also paid for the local water company, and for the improvement of town roads. The schools were built as part of the town's consolidation of district schools into centralized facilities, and were designed at a time when schools were expected to be monuments to education, and to reflect European educational traditions. The Collegiate Gothic style in which these are built was seen to fulfil these expectations. The Belden School originally served as the town's high school, and also served the students of surrounding towns. Overcrowding in the mid-20th century prompted construction of a high school wing onto the junior high school in 1955, and Belden was converted into a grammar school, a role it served until 1980. Shuttered for a number of years, it was adapted for use as town hall in 1983.


See also

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National Register of Historic Places listings in Hartford County, Connecticut __NOTOC__ This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places designations in Hartford County, Connecticut. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Hartford Coun ...


References


External links


Central School web siteSimsbury town web site
{{National Register of Historic Places National Register of Historic Places in Hartford County, Connecticut Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut Gothic Revival architecture in Connecticut Late Gothic Revival architecture School buildings completed in 1907 School buildings completed in 1913 Buildings and structures in Simsbury, Connecticut 1907 establishments in Connecticut 1913 establishments in Connecticut Town halls in Connecticut