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Home My WebLink Aboutadams-street_005512/12 Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph 1964 photo Locus Map Pre-2005 engineering map Recorded by: Marilyn Fenollosa Organization: Lexington Historical Commission Date (month / year): March 2026 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 63-139 Concord LEX.H LEX.2517 Town/City: Lexington Place: (neighborhood or village): Merriam Hill Address: 55 Adams Street Historic Name: Fiske School Uses: Present: DEMOLISHED Original: Elementary School Date of Construction: 1948 Source: Fiske Elementary School Handbook, Town of Lexington Annual Report 1948 Style/Form: Contemporary Architect/Builder: Adden, Parker, Clinch, Crimp Exterior Material: Foundation: Concrete Wall/Trim: Cinderblock frame with brick veneer Roof: Reinforced concrete Outbuildings/Secondary Structures\ (none) Major Alterations (with dates): Major Addition 1954 (Adden, Parker, Clinch, Crimp) Condition: DEMOLISHED 2005 Moved: no ☒ yes ☐ Date: Acreage: 10.62 Acres Setting: Residential Neighborhood RECEIVED MAR 30 2026 MASS. HIST. COMM. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 55 ADAMS ST MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 LEX.H LEX.2517 ☐ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. The original Fiske School was a contemporary one-story, elongated rectangular building with attached two-story ell. As described in the Town of Lexington 1948 Annual Report: “Work on the new Fiske School is progressing satisfactorily and the building should be ready for occupancy in advance of the opening of school in September. This will be one of the most attractive and modern schools in this section of the State. It consists of eight classrooms, each thirty-two by twenty-eight feet. There is to the southeast, a kindergarten room with its distinctive sunny half-circle bay window. At the far end is the fifty by sixty foot gymnasium-auditorium, which will have a stage twenty-feet wide and a seating capacity of four hundred. One also sees the conveniently located spaces for the forty-eight by twenty-eight foot lunch room and its adjacent kitchen, the administration room, lavatories, and storage rooms. Steel frameworks are already in place for the full-height classroom windows, which are to be partly clear glass and partly glass block. The auditorium windows will be glass block. Every classroom has a door opening directly to the outside so that pupils may pass outdoors immediately in case of fire. After looking at the construction of the building, however, one wonders how a fire could possibly make headway, for the only combustible materials appear to be the wooden floor in the auditorium, the storage shelves, and the tar on the roof. The basic structure is thoroughly fireproof. Sidewalls are brick backed with cinderblock, subfloors are concrete, corridor walls are glazed structural tile topped by cinderblock. The monitor roof over the eight large classrooms is of reinforced concrete. The roof over the rest of the building has a structural steel frame supporting precast concrete slabs. Moreover, the electric bell system will have a special fire alarm unit communicating directly to the town’s central fire station. As the building nears completion, its extremely modern design and efficiency will become more apparent. The monitor type roof will admit daylight through transom windows to the central corridor, a passageway usually dark and dismal in older schools. There will be four conveniently placed toilets, and in addition the first grade room and the kindergarten will have separate toilets of their own. Each classroom will have a lavatory, a drinking fountain, and more than the usual amount of shelf space and cork bulletin boards for displaying pupils’ papers. The heating plant will be located in a corner of the basement. Cast iron sectional boilers, convertible from oil to coal in case of need, will furnish steam for convector radiators in the classrooms and for modern unit vent heaters that will supply warm fresh air. Convectors and warm air will heat the auditorium. This heating system should prove economical to operate, for fiberglass insulation is freely used in the construction of the building, the glass block windows act as double windows, and the covered steam pipes run directly under the floor, thus warming the floor in the same way that radiant heating would.” INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 55 ADAMS ST MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 LEX.H LEX.2517 The 1954 addition added 10 classrooms to the existing eight, enabling the school to accommodate 500 students. The Fiske School was designed by Adden, Parker, Clinch, and Crimp. Willard Parker Adden (1868-1958) was born in Reading, Massachusetts. Adden worked as a draftsman for Charles Brigham, another leading Boston architect, from approximately 1891 to 1895 and collaborated with Brigham until about 1903. Forming a partnership with Winthrop Dana Parker in 1905, the firm designed together the James Library and the James Mercantile Building in Madison, New Jersey [both, 1899] and reportedly the Atlantic Avenue Station of the East Boston tunnel.) Constructed throughout eastern Massachusetts, mostly between 1906 and 1927, their projects include houses, banks, a library, church, and several schools. The firm also designed five significant buildings in the Shawsheen Village area of Andover for the American Woolen Company (administration offices, restaurant, commercial building, and two garages); remodeled many older homes and designed the Merchant’s Bank in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as well as the Beverly High School. Adden and Parker joined with Messrs. Clinch and Crimp in 1959. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_P._Adden accessed 03/26/26; American Architects Directory, 1956 https://aiahistoricaldirectory.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AHDAA/overview?homepageId=20644018 . Winthrop Dana Parker (1871-1955) studied architecture at MIT, graduating in 1895. He worked with the prominent Boston firm of Wheelwright and Haven in 1903-04. As noted above, he and Willard Parker Adden established the firm of Adden & Parker in 1905 and merged in 1959 with Messrs. Clinch and Crimp. “Winthrop Dana Parker”, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/132782586/winthrop-dana-parker. Howard Todd Clinch (1889-1965), born in New York City, graduated from the Columbia School of Architecture (1912) and practiced in Massachusetts and New Hampshire; among his Massachusetts affiliations, he was a secretary of the Boston Society of Architects, director of the State Association of Architects and the Boston Architectural Center and Chairman of the City of Boston Art Commission. His projects included the Stoneham, Mass. Town Hall and schools in West Bridgewater, North Andover and Reading. Under the successor firm name Clinch, Crimp, Brown and Fisher, he also designed the Bowman, Bridge and Estabrook Schools in Lexington. “Howard Todd Clinch”, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/204550328/howard-todd-clinch; American Architects Directory, 1962 https://aiahistoricaldirectory.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AHDAA/overview?homepageId=20644018 . Frank William Crimp (1899-1990), was born in London, England and was educated at the Beaufoye Technical Institute in that city. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1923. He, too, was licensed in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and affiliated with the Boston Society of Architects (secretary and director), the State Association of Architects (director), and the Boston Architectural Center. His projects included high schools in North Reading, Bedford and Burlington; and under the firm name Clinch, Crimp, Brown and Fisher, he also designed the Bowman, Bridge and Estabrook Schools in Lexington. “Frank William Crimp Sr.”, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/271860549/frank-william-crimp; American Architects Directory, 1962 https://aiahistoricaldirectory.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AHDAA/overview?homepageId=20644018 . INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 55 ADAMS ST MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 4 LEX.H LEX.2517 HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. From the Fiske Elementary Handbook, 2010: “The Fiske School is named for the Fiske family who were among the early settlers of what was called Cambridge Farms, part of which is now called Lexington. The Fiske family came to America from Suffolk, England in the late 1630s. The Fiske family assisted in building Lexington's first meeting house, helped to buy the Common for the town, and fought in many wars, including the Revolutionary war of 1775. Dr Robert Fiske (born in May 1718) lived on Hancock Street and was reputed to have been one of Lexington's first doctors. Dr. Fiske's house still stands today and was also the home of his father, David Fiske, and his son, Dr Robert Fiske. It is Dr. Joseph Fiske's land that Fiske School stands on. His house and two other Fiske family homes can still be seen today on East Street. Dr Joseph Fiske was a surgeon during the Revolutionary War. The Fiske School opened in 1949. In 1954, additional classrooms were added, bringing the total to 19. [In 1966] the Lexington School Committee unanimously approved accepting 25 students from Boston into Lexington schools. This was the first time this had been done. Concord and Lincoln soon followed. The first kindergarten programs in Lexington public schools began in 1967. In 2005 the original Fiske School was closed and all students and staff moved to a temporary home in the old Harrington building on Maple Street. Just after February vacation 2007, students moved back to a state of the art, brand new school.” BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Fiske Elementary School, Handbook, 2010 https ://fiskeprincipalblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fiske- elementaryhandbook-09-101 .pdf Hinkle, Alice and Andrea Cleghorn. Life in Lexington 1946-1995. Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Lexington. Cambridge, The Riverside Press, 1913.Lexington Historical Commission, Historical Period Summaries, Post 1940 Period https://www.lexingtonma.gov/916/Post-1940-Period Town of Lexington Assessors Records Town of Lexington GIS Mapping Town of Lexington 1948, 1953, 1954 Annual Reports INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 55 ADAMS ST MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 5 LEX.H LEX.2517 Architects’ rendering of original school (undated) (Courtesy Lexington History Museums) Original plans and drawings (Courtesy Lexington History Museums)