Get more gold stars!
Source: PC12 Schools Collection, Acc. 2014-2
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog at piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.
Read more books!
New Exhibit – School Days
Ring ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunchroom ready to sell
Chuck Berry — “School Days”
For September’s lobby case exhibit, the Local History Room presents highlights from a great collection of photographs of Kingston Elementary School dating from 1952 to 1966. These class portraits and candid shots were collected by Florence Esther DiMarzio, who taught at KES from 1920 to 1958 and served as principal for 34 of those 38 years. In addition to 180 prints, the Local History Room has digital copies of another 20 photographs held in a private collection.
We haven’t identified everyone in the photos, so if you know who some of them are, ask for a photocopy, label the people you know and return it to the Local History Room. We’ll put in their Permanent Records!
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.
New Exhibit: Iconic Buildings of Kingston
As part of the celebrations for Kingston’s 275th anniversary in 2001, the Friends of the 275th commissioned a set of blocks depicting eight iconic Kingston buildings: the old Town House, the Center Primary school (now called the Faunce School), the Pumping Station, the passenger station (now the restaurant Solstice), the First Parish Church, the Major John Bradford House, the now-gone Kingston High School, and Delano’s Wharf, shown here from the rarely seen bay side.
The blocks, along with photographs from the Local History Room, as on display this month in the Library lobby.
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.
Hot enough yet?
Now that the summer weather has arrived, do you miss the snow? The glass plate negative above shows Main Street looking north to Linden Street, while the one below shows the opposite view south on Main near the intersection with Brook Street.
Keep cool!
The eagle has landed.
Around 1946, the Town’s Honor Roll, which listed those Kingston residents who served in World War II, got an eagle. It was carved by Captain Fred Bailey, who fashioned at least two.
When the Honor Roll was taken down — it was replaced by the monument where Main Street crosses Route 3 — Holmes asked for the eagle. It stayed in his family until very recently, when it landed here in the Library, to be cared for by the Local History Room.
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.
Digging out
The trolley ran through Kingston from 1889 to 1928, and while the traffic definitely increased in the summer, the cars ran all winter too. In 1922, when the Brockton & Plymouth (successor to the Plymouth & Kingston and predecessor to the Plymouth & Brockton) owned the line, the rolling stock included three snowplow cars. One is shown here, scanned from a glass plate negative copy of an earlier photographic print.
Happy Birthday to the Reed Community Building!
Many thanks to Joe Colby, Head Custodian at the Recreation Department, for letting us know that today is the birthday of the Reed Community Building! The photograph above appeared in The Civic Progress of Kingston (Memorial Press of Plymouth, 1926) and was accompanied by Sarah DeNormandie Bailey’s text:
And this summer the town is to receive as a wonderful birthday remembrance the crowning gift of a beautiful Community House, given by Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Reed of Worcester. The Playground Committee must feel as if Aladdin’s lamp had been given to them and they had only to name a wish and have it granted. how many times have I heard their plans for a Community House and smiled to myself at the enthusiasm which could even dream of such a building, — and now it is all going to be true, only so much more and better than even the wildest dreams. It is a proud and happy Mother Town which inspires a love in the heart of a son and daughter which lives through many years to blossom at last in a gift like this.
Below is the actual building standing proudly over the ball fields in its first decade. Here’s to many more!
“The restoration is complete.”
Historic places
This September. Wikimedia, the home of Wikipedia and so much more, is hosting a photography contest called Wiki Loves Monuments, featuring photographs of properties on the National Register of Historic Places.
Kingston has two buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: the Frederic C. Adams Library and the Major John Bradford House, as well as a National Historic District, which includes the area around Main and Green Streets. For a listing of National Register sites in Plymouth County, and elsewhere, see Wikimedia’s list.
A post about a post
From Emily Fuller Drew’s card file:
In early days, all public meetings both religion and secular were held in the old meeting house and all notices of meetings were posted on the front of the meeting house for parish and town were one. After the formation of separate religious bodies and the building of the Town House, certain notices continued to be posted nearby the meeting house, and for this purpose, a small bulletin board was set up on the post where the wall of the burying ground and the fence around the Green met. This was the Town Post, the post and bulletin board where town notices were posted. Notices were certainly posted there until 1911 and I am told there were notices posted there later but not regularly.
The Town Post still stands just between the Training Green and the First Parish Church.