Forty Third Week, Thursday's "Medfield Historical Minute"

A Medfield Historical Minute...

This "Medfield Historical Minute" is brought to you by town historian Richard DeSorgher.
A little something to read and learn to give you a little break during this time of boredom during isolation due to the Coronavirus Crisis. A different "Medfield Historical Minute" will appear each day during the Crisis.

"In 1950 a town meeting was held to address the overcrowding conditions in the town schools. Three proposals were offered. One was to put a second floor on what is now the Pfaff Center, (then called the Hannah Adams Pfaff Elementary School), the second was to add a matching classroom wing off the gym of the Dale Street (then Medfield High School) and the third was to build a new elementary school altogether, on land behind the Dale Street School on Adams Street. Town Meeting chose the third option and voted to build a new elementary school. Voters being very frugal requested that the new school be “strictly functional in design.” The new Adams Street School contained just six classrooms, one cafeteria-all purpose room, one kindergarten room and an administrative office.

It was completed and open for classes in 1951 and named the Memorial School, in memory of those who had died in WWII. Just five years later the school had to be enlarged by some 13 classrooms as more and more houses continued to be built in town, including the second major housing development in the Westview Road area and another on Adams Street."