Site 3
The Phillips School
Anderson and Pinckney Streets
This architecture is typical of 19th century Boston schoolhouses. Erected in
1824, this school building was open only to white children until 1855; it was the English
High School until 1844 and the Phillips Grammar School until 1861. The school was then
moved to a larger building at the corner of Anderson and Phillips Streets and renamed the
Wendell Phillips School.
Before 1855, black children who lived in the neighborhood had to attend the school on
the first floor of the African Meeting House or, after 1834, the Smith School. When
segregated schools were abolished by legislative act, the Phillips School became one of
Boston's first schools with an interracial student body.
Photo credit: Boston Athenaeum
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