Dorchester Illustration no. 2416 16 Howe Street redux
A few weeks ago we had a vintage photo of 16 Howe Street alongside a more recent one. More information has come to light about the history of the house and its owners. This post has been written by Marti Glynn.
The little house at 16 Howe Street, built in 1836 for Nahum and Hannah Bragg, has long been known in the neighborhood as the ‘original Howe family homestead’. True, of course – the house was occupied for over 100 years by Leonard Howe and his descendants, a family with a long and distinguished history in Massachusetts. What has been little known until now, however, is that it was the last occupant of the house that provides its greatest distinction and most lasting legacy. In 1948, Lowell Kingsley bought 16 Howe Street and with his wife, Charlotte, called it home for nearly 60 years.
Lowell Vincent Kingsley was born in 1918 in Illinois to Dr. Howard and Edith (Halliday) Kingsley, who had both recently graduated with degrees in education. Howard would go on to become a professor of Psychology at Boston University’s School of Education. In 1936, Edith Kingsley joined Boston University’s Educational Clinic, which focused on remedial reading, a field then in an embryonic stage. Two years later, with colleague Helen Loud, Edith Kingsley founded the Kingsley School in the Back Bay, believed to be the first school in the nation to provide intensive reading instruction to children of normal or higher intelligence who struggled to read. In 1948, Lowell Kingsley became the Director of the Kingsley School, a position he held for thirty-seven years.
Working in the early days of what is now called “special education,” the Kingsley School’s talented, innovative teaching team explored and often succeeded with experimental ways to teach young people who had not succeeded in traditional classrooms. The school’s approach was as unique as the institution itself. Mr. Kingsley believed children would try harder to learn if they weren’t designated as difficult and if their efforts weren’t measured solely by the traditional grading system within a standard school’s class structure. Rather than issue report cards, his school prepared written reports for parents that discussed their children’s accomplishments in detail.
“We had a lot of children in those days who were a disappointment to their parents and teachers,” he said in an interview for a history of the school. “But I always balked at the labels, and I knew that we had to take care of the emotional side of the child, too.”
An innovative figure in Boston’s education history during the 20th century, Mr. Kingsley led what is now the Kingsley Montessori School from 1948 to 1985.Enrollment began to dwindle after 1972, when the Legislature approved Chapter 766, which established the right of young people in the Commonwealth to have access to education programs best suited to their needs. As school districts began providing special education, demand dropped for what the Kingsley School offered.In 1991, when the Kingsley School had relocated to Fairfield Street, it merged with a Montessori school housed in the same building. Mr. Kingsley was relieved that the school he had led would continue, albeit in a new form.
Thirty-four years after the Kingsley School first identified the need and opened its doors to educate children with learning disabilities, the concept the school pioneered was codified in Massachusetts law and, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, made available to children across America.
Bibliography
- “More Help for Slower and Gifted Students” – Boston Globe, September 19, 1965
- https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2017/09/21/lowell-kingsley-former-longtime-headmaster-kingsley-school-dies/gTDd1rT8hfxEvrHfmVxpaK/story.html
- https://www.mchoulfh.com/obituaries/Lowell-Kingsley/#!/Obituary