[walk down Centre St to #761 at the corner with Thomas Street]
Pauline Agassiz Shaw was the daughter of the famous Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz and the step-daughter of the founder of Radcliffe, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. She was married to Quincy Adams Shaw and was the aunt of Col. Robert Gould Shaw (of Civil War fame). Pauline Agassiz Shaw used the considerable fiscal means at her disposal (she was considered to be the richest woman in Boston) to fund many reform efforts. One idea came from her friend Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who started the kindergarten movement in the United States here in Boston. Shaw also supported early child care centers and settlement houses. She founded and was President of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government. She was active in efforts to promote peace and prison reforms. She was just a tremendous presence in social reforms in Boston in the nineteenth century. Technically, the plaque notwithstanding, the first public kindergarten was on Beacon Hill, the second was in the North End and then the next two opened together (one here and one in Brookline) in 1877. The Jamaica Plain location was in a municipal building (village hall) that no longer exists (its location was the parking lot behind Blanchard’s). Eventually, Shaw would fund over 30 kindergartens (spending $200,000 in the seven years between 1882-1889) before the concept was finally incorporated into the Boston Public School system in 1888.