Varnum School

The Varnum School is a historic former school building at 103 Sixth Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Greek Revival building was built in 1857, and was the first school built in the city's Centralville section after it was annexed to the city in 1851. The building was altered with a minor addition added in 1886, and a substantial Classical Revival addition was made in 1896. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. Vacant since the 2000s, it is now owned by a developer, and is slated for conversion to housing units.Description and historyThe Varnum School building is set on the south side of Sixth Street, between Myrtle and Beech Streets in the city's Centralville neighborhood, located just across the Merrimack River from its central business district. It is a three-story brick structure, with two large sections joined by a smaller one. The section facing the street is a Classical Revival structure, three stories high, with a hip roof and a projecting gable-roofed center section. Its corners are articulated by brick pilasters with stone capitals, and its windows have granite sills and lintels. The third-floor windows are round-arched, while the others are regular sash. The cornice and the pedimented gable are modillioned. This section was built in 1896 to a design by Arthur M. Burtt.Behind this section is a narrow two-story section, which joins the front section to the school's original 1857 structure, a two-story gable-roofed structure with Greek Revival styling. The slate roof is pierced by several dormers, and is topped by a cupola. A south-facing entrance is sheltered by a flat-roof portico supported by square columns. The gabled side elevations are divided by pilasters at the corners and in the center, and the gable end is fully pedimented, with a half-round window at the center.