The History of the North Bennet Street School

In the century between 1820 and 1920, an estimated 34 million immigrants came to America. Many of them arrived in New England. By 1920, a full 25 percent of New England’s population was foreign-born.[1] The ethnic groups that stayed in the Boston area and changed the face of the city were primarily Irish, Canadian, and Italian.

Jewelry

When the North Bennet Street Industrial School was established in Boston’s North End in 1885, the neighborhood was among the most densely populated areas in the United States. Low-rent tenements near the docks of the North End had been drawing immigrants for generations. The Irish began settling the area in the 1820s. As the 19th century drew to a close, Italian immigrants surpassed the Irish. Between 1880 and 1910, the immigrant population of the North End shifted from 90 percent Irish to 80 percent Italian.[2] Eastern European Jews and Portuguese were also settling in the area, but in smaller numbers.

Holistic Approach
The North Bennet Street Industrial School (NBSIS), as it was originally known, pioneered a “holistic” approach to community service a century before the term became popular. The School’s 1885 charter defines NBSIS as “an institution for training in industrial occupations persons of all ages, and for other educational and charitable work, and for furnishing opportunities for instruction and amusement to them, including libraries, reading rooms and whatever else may contribute to their physical and moral well being.”

Music

Camaraderie
NBSIS’s founders and teachers understood that, while employment was essential, immigrants also needed recreation to lighten the difficulties of establishing themselves in a new country. Immigrants found a sense of camaraderie by joining clubs at the School that revolved around activities such as reading, sewing, and ceramics. The Lilies of the Arno Club brought Italian girls together once a week to work on sewing projects. The Clover Club did the same for Irish girls. Eastern Europeans belonged to the Wiltsie Literary Club. The “Saturday Evening Girls” began as a reading club that met on Saturday evenings and then turned its attention to making pottery, developing a business that thrived and endured through the mid 20th century. [3]

Metalwork

Flexibility
The School has responded nimbly to changing times and different student populations. Founder Pauline Agassiz-Shaw set the tone for flexibility. She was adept at coming up with ideas for classes and training programs, but she never held onto projects with an iron grip. Rather, she encouraged other organizations like the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Public Library to assume her school’s projects if they had better facilities and resources. Cooking classes were among the first to spread out of North Bennet Street Industrial School and into the public schools. Early NBSIS kindergarten classes, initially considered an experimental teaching concept, became firmly established and

Early students at NBSIS were immigrant women, designated as “worthy poor,” who were taught sewing and laundry. Very quickly, the curriculum expanded to include “woodworking, pottery, jewelry, other metalwork, leatherwork, and needlework classes,” and the students expanded to include men, women, and children.[4] The School also offered English language and citizenship classes to help new Americans prepare for naturalization exams.

Pottery

Physical and Mental Dexterity
From the start, NBSIS focused on training the whole person – physical dexterity was seen as a complement to mental dexterity. “The whole boy should be sent to school and not just a part of him; it is not enough to train the intellect alone…but the eye and hand are together the most trustworthy leaders of the brain…”[5] One of the School’s early mottos was “hand and heart lead to life.” Agassiz-Shaw quickly saw the benefits of a style of manual training called “Sloyd.” Originated in Sweden, Sloyd means “physical force, sagacity, and skill.” The goal of Sloyd instruction is to promote self-confidence, problem-solving skills, independent as well as group work habits, and the ability to recognize and create fine craftsmanship.[6] On a more practical level, it taught marketable skills that could help pull the new Americans out of poverty.

Applied primarily to woodworking, the principles of Sloyd were taught at North Bennet beginning in the early 1880s before fanning out to other city schools. NBSIS established an institute for training teachers in Sloyd. Once trained, they went on to teach in public schools around the country, spreading the philosophy of this Swedish methodology of manual art instruction and putting it into practice nationwide.

Woodworking

Many Transitions
The School has undergone many transitions over the past century – first training immigrants, later training war veterans (following World War II), and still later assisting students with disabilities. In the 1980s, the School shortened its name to simply North Bennet Street School. Today, the student body comprises people of all ages who come not just from New England but from around the country and the world. The wave of immigrants to Boston’s North End has subsided, and North Bennet Street School is no longer a school for immigrants living in the neighborhood. But students from many countries still come to the School to study in the original building.

Today’s students include older, “second career” students who flock to the School’s short courses. What has remained constant over the past 120 years is the School’s commitment to promoting quality craftsmanship and training skilled craftspeople in a variety of traditional arts.

“New Skills for New Americans: Education in Craftsmanship at North Bennet Street School” features work by current students and alumni and showcases the variety of disciplines taught today at the school: bookbinding, cabinet and furniture making, carpentry and preservation carpentry, jewelry making, locksmithing, piano technology, and violin making and restoration. Objects and images from the School’s past reveal the continuity and change that define this 120-year-old educational institution, born of Boston’s vital immigrant past.

NBSS Classroom

Endnotes
[1] U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook, 1999. U.S. Census Bureau, Nativity of the Population for Regions, Divisions, and States, 1850 to 1990, Table 13.

[2] The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in American. New York, Routledge, 2000, p. 63.

[3] Sarah Henry and Mary A. Williams, North Bennet Street School, A Short History, 1885-1985, p. 20.

[4] Kate Larson, “North Bennet Street School and the Arts and Crafts Movement.” Paper from a project supported by a collaborative grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Bay State Historical League.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Gustaf Larsson, Sloyd for the Three Upper Grammar Grades. Boston, G.H. Ellis, 1907.

Previous Exhibits | New Skills for New Americans Home Page