Cambridge Rindge and Latin School - History

History

CRLS is actually several separate schools combined into a greater whole. In 1642, the year Harvard College’s first class of nine young men graduated, the General Court made it the duty of Cambridge to require that parents and masters properly educate their children or be fined if they neglected to do so. (Girls, however, did not usually attend public schools until 1789, when Boston voted that “children of both sexes” should be taught in the reading and writing schools of their newly reorganized system.) In 1648, Cambridge set up a public grammar school, Master Elijah Corlett's "lattin schoole," making Cambridge the fifth town (after Boston, Charlestown, Dorchester, and Salem) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to do so. Corlett’s schoolhouse came into the possession of Old Cambridge in 1660, and over the next century was succeeded by several new buildings. The public school that evolved from Cortlett’s original was a “grammar school” in a double sense: an English grammar school for Old Cambridge and a Latin grammar school (teaching the rudiments of Latin and Greek) for all Cambridge. The school generally aimed to prepare students for admission to college:

“And by the side of the colledge a faire GRAMMAR Schoole, for the training up of young Schollars, and fitting of them for ACADEMICALL LEARNING, that still as they are judged ripe, they may be received into the colledge of this Schoole. Master CORLETT is the Mr., who hath very well approved himselfe for his abilities, dexterity and painfulness in teaching and education of the youth under him.”

By 1832, public schools in Cambridge were open to girls as well as boys. In 1838, Cambridgeport organized a public high school to serve all of Cambridge at the corner of Broadway and Winsor Streets. However, since the location was not easily accessible to either Old Cambridge or East Cambridge, most of the new high schools’ students were drawn from Cambridgeport. In 1843, Old Cambridge set up the Female High School, and East Cambridge completed its Otis schoolhouse. Not until 1848 did plans to merge the high schools of the three competitive wards overcome sectional differences. This marked the origin of the Cambridge High School, which began in a new building erected at the corner of Amory and Summer streets and was immediately flooded with over 135 applicants.

The Cambridge High School was divided in 1886: its classical department became the Cambridge Latin School and its remaining departments the Cambridge English High School. The English High School was located at the corner of Broadway and Fayette Streets, while the Latin School was transferred to the Lee Street church, which had been renovated to receive it. At the time of the separation, the high school contained 515 pupils, and 16 teachers. Six teachers and 165 pupils went to the Latin school. In September 1888, the Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys (to become Rindge Tech), founded and maintained by Frederick Hastings Rindge, was opened to the boys of the English High School. In 1892, the English High School moved into a commodious new building on Broadway; Rindge had presented the land to Cambridge at a cost of $230,000. The EHS’s old building at Broadway and Fayette was remodeled, and the Latin School moved in. By 1896, the Latin School had grown so quickly that plans were underway for another new building (cost approx. $250,000) that would stand on land adjacent to the English High School building and the Public Library.

In 1977, Cambridge High & Latin and the Rindge School of Technical Arts and were merged into Cambridge Rindge and Latin, or CRLS. The old Cambridge High & Latin building was demolished in 1980, but the old granite lintel and doorway frame have been put in place at the corner of Ellery Street and Broadway as a commemorative archway, leading into the grassy fields of Joan Lorentz Park.

As of 2009, Cambridge Rindge and Latin remains one of the most diverse schools in the United States, with over 83 different countries represented within its halls.