Colegrove Park Elementary School Wins Preservation Award
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Colegrove Park Elementary School is now an award-winning project.
The Massachusetts Historical Commission is presenting the renovation project with its annual Preservation Award at a ceremony set for May 19 at the state archives building.
In a letter informing Mayor Richard Alcombright about the award, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin wrote that "the careful restoration of the Drury Academy demonstrates a strong commitment to historic preservation that goes well beyond what is normally expected."
The school reopened in January after nearly two years of renovation and reconstruction. Originally Drury Senior High School, the century-old building dates back to an earlier predecessor, Drury Academy, and incorporates a wall from that 19th-century structure.
Significant efforts were made during construction to preserve or restore important elements of the building's history, including its stained-glass windows, decorative pillars, terrazzo flooring, turned moldings and the cove ceiling that had been in the former auditorium (now the gymnasium).
The renovation from its former life as a middle school also included the incorporation of the "Old Drury" wall by leaving elements of the brick face in the newly restored walls.
"It is for this significant achievement that the Drury Academy has been selected to be honored this year," wrote Galvin.
The building was nominated by project architect Margo Jones, principal of Jones Whitsett Architects.
The "old" Drury opened in 1916, the third building to be constructed as a school on a hill donated by businessman Nathan Drury. The high school was turned into Silvio O. Conte Middle School, for the Berkshire's late congressman, in the mid-1970s after the new Drury High School opened on South Church Street. Conte was closed in 2009 over budgetary and building issues.
The new renovation kept the Drury and Conte names on the building, and the memorial plaques at the former front entrance from Colegrove Park. A number of oversized historic pictures were included in the design to connect its students, past and present.
Tags: awards, Colegrove Park, historic preservation, historical commission,
