For more than 90 years Baldwin School — proud and tidy and alive with students and teachers — served as a school for the children of Watertown. In 2000, with the opening of a new school in town, Baldwin was mothballed and the halls and classrooms at 68 North Street were silenced.
This summer Taft purchased the Baldwin School building with the hope of bringing the school back to its original vibrancy.
“Taft and Watertown have shared such an intimate and wonderful history since the day Horace Taft moved his school here in 1893 — and buying Baldwin seemed such a perfect way to honor that history and the partnership between the school and the town, our neighbors, and the municipal leaders. I could not be more excited,” said Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78. “It simply is too lovely and too historic a building for Watertown for it to sit idle and slowly decline. The board of trustees and I felt an obligation to preserve it — for the neighborhood, for the town, for all of us.”
With more than 20,000 square feet spread over three floors, the building offers high ceilings, wide hallways, and large windows. The property sits on almost three acres of land just a short walk from Taft’s main campus.
Though much analysis and planning work will need to be completed before the building can again be put to use, Taft’s plan is to restore the building and return it to a well-maintained, lively part of Watertown’s historic district. The building’s purchase came after the Watertown Town Council voted in July to lift a deed restriction that would have limited the property to residential units for those aged 55 and over.
The building’s purchase was made possible, in part, by a partnership between Taft and town leaders and the support of Watertown residents — as well as the remarkable generosity of the David, Helen and Marion Woodward Foundation.
“As was the case when Taft purchased and renovated the church on the Green, the Woodward Foundation stepped forward in a way that was simply inspiring,” MacMullen said.
As Woodward Foundation board member M. Hemingway Merriman noted, Taft’s purchase and restoration of the Baldwin School aligns well with the Foundation’s mission. “When Mrs. Marion Woodward Ottley established her trusts,” Merriman explained, “she hoped that by doing so it would allow the trustees of her funds the ability ‘to leave the world a better place than we found it.’ She lived in the house next door to the present Health Complex (known by us old timers as The P. O. Drug Store) and loved the neighborhood and the Taft School.”
“When I was approached by Willy MacMullen to see if The Woodward Foundation would have an interest in helping with the purchase of Baldwin School, we as a board were as enthusiastic as he was with his wonderful vision for Taft's use of the old school. The grand old building, with Taft’s care and attention, will be the best way to maintain the neighborhood,” said Merriman. “Watertown is fortunate to have The Taft School as neighbors and residents of Watertown.”