The building, then and now: 110 O Street

The model needs JavaScript. Here are drawings of it instead.

Drawing of the building today, from Fifth Street and from the parking lot side: brick walls, a green copper cornice, dormers and a railed roof deck on the slate roof, black steel balconies.

TodayLeft: the south front on Fifth Street. Right: the east side, over the parking lot.

Drawing of the building in 1901, from the same two sides: the same brick walls, a darker cornice, and three small pointed towers on the roof.

1901Left: the south front on Fifth Street. Right: the east side. The three towers are drawn as the 1901 photograph shows them.

Notes on the building

1881
On February 7, 1881 the Board of Aldermen ordered $6,000 paid for a 20,000-square-foot lot at the corner of O and Fifth Streets, as the site for a primary schoolhouse.
1884
The City Auditor's report for 1883-84 says the roof was "finished with four dormers, and two towers of copper, receiving the ventilating shafts." The 1901 photograph shows three towers. All three are gone.
1884
On December 23, 1884 the School Committee named it the Benjamin Pope School. On October 25 the city had turned the finished building over to the School Committee.
1901
For about sixty years the building served South Boston's youngest students. In 1901 it was the only primary school building in its district, which counted 500 primary pupils.
1919
The City Auditor described four classrooms on each floor. The School Committee's documents for 1919, published in 1920, printed a photograph of one of them: "The Library Corner, Benjamin Pope School".
1946
In May 1945 the City Council asked the School Committee to keep the school open. By September 1946 the building stood empty, and the School Committee voted that it should be sold.
1982
A 1982 city survey calls it a well-preserved Queen Anne and Chateauesque primary school.
2000
In 1999 the building was sold to a developer. The master deed that created the 14-unit Benjamin Pope Condominium was recorded on October 31, 2000. Since then it has been homes.

The 1901 photograph, the 1919 classroom photograph and the atlas plate are on the story page, with their sources.

How the model was made

The walls, windows and roof were measured from photographs a resident took of the building, by counting brick courses. Those photographs are not shown here. The towers and the 1901 roof come from the 1901 photograph in Toomey and Rankin's History of South Boston (published 1901; public domain in the United States). The lot, the streets and the 1901 porch on O Street come from the Bromley atlas of 1899, plate 24 (Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library; no known copyright restrictions).

Building outline and heights: City of Boston open data (PDDL), from Boston Buildings with Roof Breaks, Boston 3D Buildings (Existing) and Parcels 2024. Streets: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Ground level: USGS 3DEP (public domain).

Where no source shows a part, such as the west wall behind the trees, it is drawn as a reasonable guess. No people and no rooms are shown.

In the 1901 view, the small print beside the model is that photograph: Toomey and Rankin, History of South Boston, page 335; scan by Boston College Libraries, Internet Archive. It is shown beside the model, never painted onto it.

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