Historical Materials: Gloucester Buildings & Businesses

The Riggs School stood in a meadow on the east side of Mill River, across the street from the Riverdale Mills, on the south side of Reynard Street where it leaves Washington Street. It was built in 1850, and replaced an even earlier school across the street. It is the large white building, just to the left of the distant Methodist church, in Lane's The Babson Meadows at Riverdale, 1863 (inv. 11). Children from much of the Fourth Parish, including Riverdale and Wheeler’s Point, went to this school for their first eight years of primary and grammar school. By 1913, it was the second oldest school standing in Gloucester and needed improvements such as modern toilets, better ventilation and heating, and fire escapes. Lane’s great-great niece, Florence Lane (great-granddaughter of Fitz H. Lane’s brother Edward) attended this school. It was eventually torn down in the late 1950's, and a twenty-first-century development of single-family houses fills the site. 

Current location: south corner of Washington and Reynard Streets.

– Sarah Dunlap (September, 2013)