At Fairhaven High, 'the most beautiful classroom' in America looks just like it did in 1906

FAIRHAVEN — The elaborate ceiling in the Elizabethan Renaissance style is a work of art in itself, but it’s the classroom that has been so well preserved that it looks much the same as it did 116 years ago.

The former Room 7 — now Room 107 — draws the attention of all who enter Fairhaven High School, among one of the town’s unique historic landmarks.

Fairhaven High School Alumni Association President Bob Foster, who will resume offering his tours of the “Castle on the Hill” this summer, takes great pride in the history of what Architectural Digest in 2017 deemed the most beautiful high school in Massachusetts.

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“It is a masterpiece,” he said. “There was no school like it in America.”

The benefactor of this gift to the town of Fairhaven was Henry Huttleston Rogers, one of the richest men in America who made his fortune in the oil refining business as an executive at Standard Oil working alongside cofounder John D. Rockefeller.

The school was built in 1906, and the day it opened that fall, there were 129 students in the entire school. Yet the auditorium upstairs was built to hold 385 seats.

“Mr. Rogers built it for the future,” Foster said. “When he had that in mind, he planned on it lasting a long time.”

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Foster said Rogers wanted it to be large enough to be the home room for the juniors and the seniors, because in those days students would often drop out of school after learning the basics to go to work, and he really wanted to encourage them to graduate like he had done. He graduated from the original Fairhaven High School as a member of the first graduating class when it was located across the street.

The original 102 wooden desks are still in the classroom of this historic landmark. It’s the only room with the original desks in it.

Foster said the cost did not matter to Rogers. In fact, he said, no one knows how much it cost to build the high school. There were no building permits back then, and there were no receipts or records of any cost.

However, Rogers did give some instructions to his architect, Charles Brigham of Watertown, through his friend and School Committee Chairman Thomas Tripp.

The skilled craftsmen from Italy that Rogers hired to do the masonry work on the ceiling by hand and the Bavarian woodcarvers he hired were among the best of the best.

“Rogers told him basically to build the most beautiful high school in America and not to worry about cost,” Foster said. “Rogers told Brigham that one thing he wanted on the main floor was one extra-large classroom that would be the most beautiful classroom in the building.”

Brigham, a famed Boston-based architect who was famous for his buildings in Boston and New York, also built Rogers’ House in New York City that was his primary year-round residence while he worked on Wall Street.

Rogers established covenants whenever he gave buildings to the town and the one condition for the high school was that it must always be the highest center of learning in the town. He also encouraged the town to keep up the maintenance of the building.

Foster, who served on the Fairhaven School Committee for 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s, said they were always under the impression they could not add on to the school. An addition to the school in the 1930s connected to the gymnasium by a tunnel was torn down years later.

Rogers would often return to his mansion built in 1895 in Fairhaven near Fort Phoenix for the summer. Brigham also designed the Millicent Library, Unitarian Church, Town Hall and finally the high school for Rogers, who died three years it was built.

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Historic classroom preserved by 2:1 vote

There was an uproar 90 years later when the Fairhaven school department decided it would be a good idea to remove the desks and divide what was then called room 7 in half as part of the $18 million high school renovation project for other purposes, because it was no longer being used as a study hall.

A non-binding question on the Election Day ballot in 1996 was approved by a 2 to 1 margin, and the administration abided by the 1,555 to 929 vote.

Members of the Fairhaven Alumni Association opposed the idea after the group had spent thousands repairing the desks and chairs and updating fixtures and walls in the room. The voters rallied around the cause.

In the 1980s, the classroom was completely restored, as was the equally elegant auditorium. Funding from the alumni association and a Massachusetts Historical Commission grant helped pay for it.

All the desks were taken out to be refinished, and a private restoration company from Boston put staging around the room to clean the ceiling with tiny brushes. The woodwork was also cleaned and covered with a dull wax.

In 2008, room 7 again needed more work as portions of the elaborate ceiling began to peel and fall, prompting the closing of the classroom for restoration completed with funding from the Rogers Trust Fund, an endowment left to the school. The town recently appropriated funding for outside work.

“I think Henry Rogers would be happy with the way the town has taken care of the school, and the alumni association has helped out a lot over the years,” he said. “Right now we’re working on replacing the stage curtains in the auditorium.”

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The storied classroom continues to put Fairhaven High School on the map.

Veteran actor Paul Giamatti’s new Lifetime movie “The Holdovers,” due out in late 2023, was filmed in Fairhaven High School during February vacation last year with the preserved classroom one of the highlights.

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Historic classroom preserved like 1906 at Fairhaven High