The History and Fate of the Colburn School

Standing tall adjacent to the Westwood Public Library, the Colburn School is one of Westwood's most historic landmarks.  

But the big blue building is not the first of it's kind. Throughout Westwood's history, there has been not one, but two Colburn schools. 

The original school was moved in 1877 to make room for the present building.

"When the new Colburn School was built in 1877, it was considered state of the art," said John Pritchard, a long time Westwood resident and member of the Westwood Historical Society.

"The old Colburn School was moved to where the Folsom Funeral Home is now, beside the fire station."

The Colburn School that now sits on High Street was originally an elementary school for grades one through eight, and the main courses of study were reading, writing and arithmetic.

"That was typical [for elementary schools] back in those days," Pritchard said. "They also had a wood shop upstairs."

As the years passed, the Colburn School eventually only provided education for grades one through six. Grades one through three were stationed on the first floor, and grades four through six were on the second floor. At the time, construction had begun on the Islington School on School Street, where the playground now lies.

"Then in the 50's or 60's, things changed" Pritchard said. "The schools got overcrowded and they built the Sheehan school for grades one through six. The Colburn School became the junior high (school) for several years for seventh grade, and Islington became eighth grade."

In the late 1950s, Westwood finally opened Westwood High School, and thus used the Colburn School as the administration building for Westwood Public Schools, as well as the superintendent's office. In 2005, the administration moved to offices at the present high school on Nahatan Street.

(Editor's Note: To clarify the above paragraph, the Colburn School was still in use  as a school during the early 1960s before the building was used for administrative purposes.)

Since then, the Colburn School has been unoccupied and is slowly deteriorating. 

Later this year, the Colburn School will be moved slightly to the back of its current lot before the town begins construction on the new library. The new library will rest where the Colburn School now stands, and the school itself will eventually be moved to the current spot of the town library.

Westwood was granted permission by the Massachusetts Historical Commission to move the school during the construction of the new library. The MHC has stated the school should be relocated within the High Street historic district.

But the moving of the building isn't pleasing everyone, and at least one Westwood resident is dismayed by the project.

"Instead of allocating $300,000 to fix the building up, we want to spend $300,000 on the Colburn school road show, a punishing process to make the old building permanently unusable," Steven Greffenius, a local resident, wrote in a short e-book titled "Colburn School & the New Library," which he featured in a post on the Westwood Blog. Greffenius has written several articles regarding the fate of the Colburn School on the blog, as well.  

But there is a plan for the eventual fate of the Colburn School. The Westwood Board of Selectmen has assembled a task force, comprising numerous town officials, to decide what the school will be used for after construction of the new library is complete.

Once a purpose for the building has been decided, the task force will then discuss what renovations need to be done to the building in order to maintain it's structural value.