In September 1878, a "magnificent" new high school was dedicated on Pond Street from plans made by prominent Providence architect William H. Walker. The old high school at Benefit and Waterman Streets had been overcrowded for years. The expansion of the school system--both the number of students served and the buildings that served them--was one of Mayor Thomas Doyle's major achievements during his eighteen years as mayor. Throughout the 19th and into the 20th Century, the city had always played catch-up to its exploding student population and the complex needs of its diverse, global youth.

The public school system around 1878 included one high school, eleven grammar schools, thirty-five intermediate schools, and forty primary schools, serving over 12,000 students, both boys and girls as well as Black and white. See Maritcha Lyons' story about the integration of the public school system in 1866. Mayor Doyle's sister, Sarah Doyle, was principal of the girls' department of the high school and an important advocate in the fight for equal education for women.

The battle over public education in Rhode Island had been fought for centuries already. Town leaders in the 17th Century struggled with creating a common school and how to pay for it. Under pressure in 1800 from newly influential groups like the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers, the General Assembly created a state-financed public school system, but reversed course in 1803 in a conservative backlash. Providence had to fund its public school system independently until the state passed a new public education law in 1828.

A schoolhouse was first built on Pond Street in 1819. This stretch of the street became a focal point for city schools, with a grammar school first, then the English High School (1878), the Manual Training High School (1892), Classical High School (1897), and Central High School (1921). This concentration led to the redevelopment of the school campuses in the late 1960s. Most of the old schools were demolished, including the English High School, to make way for new, modern school buildings and a more campus-like feel, with playing fields and open space.

Today's Providence school system comprises 41 schools serving over 24,000 students who speak 55 different languages and trace culture and heritages to 91 countries. Providence still struggles to provide the basics of an education for its young people. The challenges of defining what a public education means also remain as complex and controversial as they were over two hundred years ago.

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The area between Broadway and Fountain Streets in La Salle Square--currently a large surface parking lot surrounded by a black, wrought-iron fence--has hosted not only the parked vehicles of Providence Bruins fans and suburban commuters, but also several notable city institutions, including the Central Police Station and a Catholic boys' school, after which, the square is named.

In 1868, Providence's Bishop Francis P. McFarland, who had been seeking land for a Catholic school, wrote a letter to a superior reporting that "I could not obtain the property that I was talking about to you when you were here. But I did obtain a lot which is bigger, better and more centrally located. The house is worth more than the first one. It has an empty lot next to it and will cost $18,000. Its location is favorable, on the corner of Broadway and Fountain Street, two of the best streets in the city." The Catholic Diocese of Rhode Island purchased the house and lot from Albert and Jesse Eddy, and broke ground for the school building in 1870.

The resulting school, La Salle Academy, had six classrooms and an assembly hall. The open space beside and behind the school was used for sports and outdoor dining. The wood frame building next door (which one contemporary described as "old and dingy") served as housing for the Christian Brothers. The school day ran from 7:30-4:30, with a break from 11:00-1:00 for lunch, and two recesses for students to play outside, allowing teachers to "ventilate the classrooms." The classrooms themselves were bright, with sun streaming in through the sizeable windows, and students sitting on long benches in the blackboard-lined rooms.

When the school became overcrowded in the 1920s, a new building was constructed in the academy's current location in Elmhurst. The original school buildings were eventually torn down, replaced by the looming Providence Central Police and Fire Headquarters. The buff-colored Central Police building, constructed in 1940, was boxy, L-shaped, with decorative art deco details. Inside, it housed offices, waiting areas, holding cells, and bays for fire trucks. After the police and fire departments moved to a new, combined Public Safety Complex at 325 Washington Street, the structure was razed, despite fierce opposition from a number of sources, including the Providence Preservation Society and several neighborhood associations, all of whom insisted that the building was historically significant and structurally sound.

A building official working for the City of Providence, however, deemed the building a safety hazard (the state fire marshal found 27 code violations), and the new owners began demolition less than a week later. The city allowed the developer to create a surface parking lot on the site while planning for a new building. (In 2019, twelve years after the building's demolition, it remains a parking lot, although discussions about possible development opportunities continue.)

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Born in 1738, Moses Brown was the youngest of the five brothers born into the prominent Brown family. He became an abolitionist, and manumitted his slaves in 1773; he did this although other members of the Brown family were slave traders. He was also a merchant, working for his uncle Obadiah at Obadiah Brown & Co., later Nicholas Brown & Co. and run by Moses and his brothers Nicholas, John, and Joseph. Moses was also a reformer, serving as a deputy in the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1764 to 1771, and actively opposing the Stamp Act in 1765.

He joined the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1774 after the death of his first wife, Anna. Six years later, in 1780, Moses donated $575 to the Friends of New England for the establishment of a school (for both Quaker and non-Quaker children) in Rhode Island. He had a keen interest in the school from the start.

In 1784, the Friends’ Yearly Meeting School opened in Portsmouth, only to close after another four years due to low enrollment and budget concerns. More than thirty years would pass before the school’s reemergence. Still believing in the importance of an education built upon the ethical values of the Friends Society, in 1814 Brown donated forty-three acres of land in Providence for the reestablishment of the school. From 1819 to 1902 the school was known as the Friends’ Meeting School, before being renamed the Moses Brown School, in honor of its most important benefactor, in the 1920s.

Designed by renowned Providence architect John Holden Greene, the new school opened its doors on January 1, 1819. Initially, non-Quaker children paid higher tuition and had to agree to conform to specific standards before they could be admitted to the school. With an average yearly attendance of 125 over the first decade, the new iteration of the Friends’ School was considered an instant success. In 1822 Moses Brown’s only son, Obadiah passed away, and in his will he gifted a total of $100,000 for the building and furnishings, and an additional $650 worth of books and maps. The donation allowed the school to expand as its popularity increased.

During the first century of operation, boys and girls were accepted to the school. At the turn of the twentieth century, co-ed schools were becoming increasingly controversial, and in 1925 the Moses Brown School became a boys-only institution, sending female students to the nearby Lincoln School. Only in the 1970s did the school again admit female students. Today the school continues as an elite private Friends’ school on Providence’s east side.

In 2015 the Moses Brown School gained internet fame when Head of School Matt Glendinning parodied the hit Disney song, “Let it Go” on YouTube. His snow day announcement, “School is Closed” raked in over 4.1 million views and was featured on NBC’s Today Show.

Notable alumni of the school include Jesse Williams, political activist and actor on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, and Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., the 32nd and 34th Mayor of Providence.

Moses Brown died on September 6, 1836. He rests in the North Burial Ground’s Quaker cemetery, a parcel of land that Moses Brown formerly owned.

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In the early 1800s local Baptists established the Christian Baptist Church here at the top of Adamsville Hill; after the church closed, the building was later used as a school. Today, the buried foundation is all that remains of the building that once stood on this site.

The Christian Baptist Church's minister may have been Francisco Veray. He was the first recorded person from Portugal to live in Little Compton, anglicizing his name to "Francis Veray." He, along with his wife, daughter and grandchildren, is buried in the center plot of the cemetery adjacent to the church.

Shortly after Veray's death in 1866, it appears the church closed. The building quickly reopened as the Number Six School. Originally, the school was farther down Adamsville Hill, most likely in the small blue house that still stands on the hill's slopes today. The school had one teacher who taught grades 1-8, and it operated until 1929, when the Wilbur School opened on the Little Compton Commons.

Once it stopped functioning as a school the building housed the Bell Whist Club for a short time. It was eventually auctioned in 1930; the new owners moved it across the border into Darmouth, MA, to serve as an office for a propane business.

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