The Plummer-Motz School, formerly Falmouth High School, is a former school building at 192 Middle Road in
Falmouth, Maine
Falmouth ( ) is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The population was 12,444 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area.
A northern suburb of Portland, Falmouth borders Casco Bay a ...
. Built in the 1930s, it was the town's first high school, serving as first a high school, and later as a junior high school and elementary school, until its closure in 2011.
The building has been converted to residential use.
Description and history
The former Plummer-Motz Schools is located south of Falmouth's town center, at the southwest corner of Middle and Lunt Roads. The Plummer School building, originally the high school, is the more northerly part of the complex. It is a two-story
Colonial Revival
The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture.
The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...
masonry building, with a central portion flanked by projecting wings. It is covered by a
dormer
A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window.
Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...
ed
gambrel roof
A gambrel or gambrel roof is a usually symmetrical two-sided roof with two slopes on each side. The upper slope is positioned at a shallow angle, while the lower slope is steep. This design provides the advantages of a sloped roof while maxim ...
with shingled ends and dormers, with a
cupola
In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout.
The word derives, via Ital ...
at the center. It was at one time joined by a hyphen to the adjacent Motz School, a pair of single-story gable-roofed buildings. The hyphen was removed in 2014, when the town divided the property and sold the Plummer School building.
Prior to construction of the Plummer School, Falmouth's high school students were educated by arrangement in the schools of adjacent towns. Need for a town high school was identified in 1928, and the central portion and one wing of the Plummer School building were constructed in 1931, to a design by Portland architect
John P. Thomas. The second wing was added in 1936 when additional financing was made available. The town continued to grow rapidly over the following decades, resulting the construction of the adjacent school buildings and the eventual conversion of this building to a junior high school. Sometime prior to the 1959-1960 school year the combined Plummer and Motz buildings were converted into an elementary school, a use that continued until 2011. The town in 2013 sold the Plummer School to a developer,
[ who converted it to residential housing.
]
See also
*
References
{{National Register of Historic Places
School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine
School buildings completed in 1931
Buildings and structures in Falmouth, Maine
National Register of Historic Places in Cumberland County, Maine