Federal Hill School, Bristol, Conn. 100.

Federal Hill School, Bristol, Conn. 100.

View of a large brick institutional building fronted by a spacious lawn. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were promptly sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The original block of the Federal Hill High School (at the right) was designed by Waterbury, CT architect Theodore Peck and built ca.1910. The design commission, money and civic will to get the school built on Federal Hill - also home of the city's wealthiest industrialists and entrepreneurs- was likely supported by Miles Peck, the architect's cousin and Bristol's leading banker. Enlarge in subsequent years, the structure is a fairly standard Neo-Classical design used in scores of contemporaneous school buildings in the country.