I was reading this thread about the earliest public schools in America, and there was a link there to the Boston Latin School. Following further links there I came to the website of the Boston Public School System…but Boston English doesn’t seem to be there. I had also tried searching for it directly in Google, but got nothing but false hits about “schools” and “english”. What happened? I thought Boston English was the second oldest high school, after the Latin School. Was it closed, or renamed?
It seems to have undergone a slight name change:
I think it is still often informally referred to as “Boston English” in news stories or whatnot.
Though it is spiritually one of the oldest, I’m pretty sure the building it’s currently in is some sort of old oil building (old, but certainly not from the 1800s).
Changing buildings is nothing unusual, especially in California. Los Angeles High School was founded in 1873 and moved several times before settling into its present location in 1916. A gorgeous Neo-Gothic structure housed the school until the 1973 earthquake, when it had to be pulled down and replaced with a horrible contemporary structure without the slightest concession to refinement or adornment.
Ironically, until recently, the school used a picture of the 1916 building on its web page until recently.
The website is worth a look. You can see a few yearbooks from the turn of the last century in their entirety, if you like that sort of thing.