Article 2 of the warrant for the Oct. 3 Special Town Meeting will determine the future of Bromfield House, which stands at 39 Mass. Ave. on the curve of the road entering town center. It is currently home to the superintendent’s office and other school administrative personnel, as well as offices of the directors of special education and community education.
Passage of the article by a simple majority would transfer the “care, custody, management, and control” of Bromfield House from the School Committee to the Select Board and would authorize the Select Board to “sell, convey, transfer, or otherwise dispose of” the building and land. Future disposition of the house will be bound by the intentions of Margaret Bromfield Blanchard’s will.
In that will, dated 1871, Blanchard states her intent “To establish a school in the town of Harvard, in which the higher branches of education should be taught, upon the site that for nearly half a century was the chosen residence of my grandfather, Henry Bromfield, and to connect with such an institution the memory of his name.” She designates 10 trustees and gives instructions for the school building as well as stipulations about financial and managerial aspects of the school.
The clause of perhaps most connection to current matters is the one stating that all interest, income, and profits of the trust will be used for keeping the building and grounds in suitable repair, for the purchase of necessary books and “apparatus,” for providing instruction for a limited number of pupils of talent and promise whose parents may be unable to pay for it, and to defraying such other expenses in the conduct of the institution as the trustees deem necessary.
Blanchard died in 1876, and a building was begun in July of 1877. Bromfield Academy (now the anchor of the Harvard Public Library) was dedicated in September of the following year and opened with 40 young men and women. Its cost was about $20,000, leaving the remainder of the $71,000 bequest for investment.
Bromfield House
In July 1914, the Clinton Courant announced that the trustees of the Bromfield School would soon build a house for its principal on land nearly opposite the school grounds. A later item noted that “this new residence will add one more to the now attractive row of new houses on the street.” The newspaper kept a running commentary of the status of construction of the house, from its foundation in November to the “quite finished appearance outside” in January 1915 to the “last work being done” in early March. In mid-March it reported, “Mr. Richards and his family are now occupying the Bromfield House, having moved in last week.”
James Albion Dunlap Sr. came to Bromfield in 1918 to serve as principal and to teach math and science, and he remained until 1952. He was the second principal to live with his family (his son Jim was a student at the school) at Bromfield House, and they were there until 1940, when the building ceased to be a residence for the principal and became the office for the superintendent of schools. As the school district’s need for space grew, other administrative offices followed.
The trustees of the Bromfield School became a charitable and educational corporation in 1908, and as the trust struggled with diminishing funds, the trustees entered into several agreements with the town. In 1940 the trustees agreed to lease its real estate (which included Bromfield House) to the town for $1 a year and to give the town one half of the annual net proceeds from the trust for the maintenance of Bromfield School. In 1961 the court authorized the trustees to expend for scholarships whatever income was not paid to the town
In 1980 a significant amendment was made to the agreement between the town and the Bromfield trustees, necessitated by the fact that income from the trust, after payment of one-half to the town, was insufficient to enable the granting of scholarships. The trustees decided they needed to make a significant change in order to continue to carry out the educational and charitable purposes of Mrs. Blanchard’s will. The result was that at the Annual Town Meeting of March 1980, the town released the trustees from any obligation to give income to the town. In exchange, the trustees gave and the town accepted a gift of the Bromfield House, to be used for educational purposes.
School Committee says ‘no longer of use’
In response to a high estimate for the cost of repairing and renovating the building, in December 2013 the School Committee voted unanimously to send notice to Town Administrator Tim Bragan that it will “no longer use Bromfield House for educational purposes pending further discussion and identification of acceptable space to the School Committee.” With Town Meeting’s 2018 vote for a new elementary school, the design of which included space for administrative offices, the question of new space was settled. The School Committee now wants to be rid of responsibility for Bromfield House.
In 2014, while the relocation of school administrative offices was still in flux, the Bromfield trustees sent a letter to the School Committee and the Select Board, reminding them that whatever future action the town takes on the use or transfer of Bromfield House must be in keeping with the intent of Margaret Bromfield Blanchard’s will and the subsequent judgments issued by probate court. The letter included previous court decrees, and it notes “the final decree entered by the court includes a provision that the property must continue to be used for educational purposes and in the event of the sale of the property, the proceeds are to be returned to the trust for scholarship purposes.” Bromfield trustee Pete Jackson confirmed in a phone call this week that “the trustees’ position has not changed since that letter,” meaning the trustees should weigh in on whatever disposition the Select Board recommends and evaluate it in light of that court decision.
