Carefully cross Centre and walk between the Church and 363 Centre Street.Continue to the back of the church and pass between the 2 old school buildings to stand on Sunnyside Street
St. Norbert High School (26 Sunnyside)
This building dates to 1926 and was designed by the same architect as the church, Charles Greco. He uses a Jacobean Revival style for this building – with some allusions to the modern Art Deco style thrown in for good measure. This building was built as the high school for the parish but was redeveloped in 2015 to twenty one rental apartments. It is now known as the Off Centre Lofts.
Cheverus School (30 Sunnyside)
Next door is the Cheverus School which dates to 1898. It’s a Venetian Gothic building that uses varying shades of sandstone and polished marble columns with floral capitals to add to its highly decorative exterior. On the second story of the façade are two busts of Lincoln and Washington (a highly unusual motif for a religious school building). The school was named for Jean Louis de Cheverus – who was the first Catholic Bishop of Boston. This was the elementary school for the parish. It now houses the Hyde Square Task Force.
The building materials of this school were re-used from the Hotel Boylston, which stood in downtown Boston at the corner of Boylston and Tremont. When it was taken down for a new building, the Archdiocese "recycled" the materials!
turn to the other side of the street
25-29 Sunnyside Street
These houses are part of a “worker’s utopia” that was developed by the philanthropist Robert Treat Paine (whose great grandfather of the same name signed the Declaration of Independence). He described it as "perfect housing for the substantial workingman". The project included 119 houses built on five streets (Sunnyside, Westerly, Round Hill, Edge Hill and Gay Head) between 1889-1899 (with most built between 1890-92). The houses all follow the same design by the architect George W. Pope.
Looking at #29 we get the best preservation of the concept. These houses were built as single family wood-framed houses. They each had a front porch with front and back yards (providing outdoor space for the occupants). They were ornamented with bargeboards under the eaves, spool work posts and projecting bays. There was variety added to the façade by using both clapboards and shingles. In many ways, these are much, much smaller versions of the Adam Mock house we saw back on Sheridan Street.
Each of these houses were sold for between $2,500 and $4,000. Paine pioneered the use of the “level monthly payment” (or amortized mortgage) through his Workingman’s Cooperative Bank. Paine wanted the average family to be able to afford their own house outside the city slums (and newly built electric streetcar lines made a house in Jamaica Plain a reality for working folks). Occupations listed for earlier residents included: mason, housepainter, professor and railroad engineer.