| Walnut Street School | |
| Location: | Reading, Massachusetts |
| Coordinates: | 42.5086°N -71.1069°W |
| Built: | 1854 |
| Architect: | Wadlin, Horace G. |
| Architecture: | Italianate |
| Added: | July 19, 1984 |
| Mpsub: | Reading MRA |
| Refnum: | 84002841 |
The Walnut Street School is a historic school building at 55 Hopkins Street in Reading, Massachusetts. A two-room schoolhouse built in 1854, it is the town's oldest public building. Since 1962 it has been home to the Quannapowitt Players, a local theatrical company. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
The Walnut Street School is set on the west side of Hopkins Street in a residential area of southern Reading. It is a roughly rectangular single-story wood-frame structure, with its long axis perpendicular to the street. The building is finished in wooden clapboards, and has a gable roof whose eaves are studded with Italianate brackets. The building corners are pilastered. The street-facing facade is two bays wide, with each bay containing a pair of sash windows; there is a single sash window in the gable end. Most of the south facade is covered by a modern extended vestibule with a hip roof, and a projecting gable-roofed portico supported by round columns near the western end. One entrance is under the portico, while another is roughly centered on the extended vestibule.[1]
The building was originally located at the intersection of Summer Avenue and Walnut Street in Reading,[2] and housed two class-rooms when it was built in 1854. It is the oldest surviving civic building in the town.[3] In 1883 the building was moved to its current location on Hopkins Street and renamed to the Chestnut Hill School.[2] In 1884 the building's entrance was redesigned and its interior reconfigured, to plans by local architect Horace G. Wadlin. It was used as a school until 1944. In 1962 it was sold to the Quannapowitt Players, a local theatrical organization,[1] which has further modified the entry and adapted the interior as a 150-seat theater.