Beverly Village for Living & the Arts

Beverly’s Briscoe School was built in 1923 during a period of economic growth, prosperity, and optimism. It was a vibrant school with a lengthy history of educating high school and middle school students for many years until it closed its doors in 2018, with the construction of a new middle school just down the street. Soon after, the city began to think about what the future of the defunct school would be.

SV Design, Harborlight Homes, and Beacon Communities were brought in to help reimagine the future of the historic Briscoe School building as Beverly Village for Living & the Arts: 85 affordable housing units for seniors and six artist live/work studios, with common areas shared throughout. The community of Beverly will have access to the restored theater, grass fields, and turfbowl.

Tasked with creating a design sensitive to maintaining the building’s history, SV Design recognized great possibilities in restoring the building for modern use while preserving the integrity of the original turn-of-the-20th-century details, including the stately architectural exterior and auditorium modeled after Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Due to its sound structure, SV Design was able to respect the form and layout of the building. The original floor plan, trim work, wide interior hallways, lockers, and walls between classrooms were maintained, and the generously sized classrooms are now open-concept apartments with refinished hardwood flooring and large windows – creating a bright, modern floor plan.

While most interior details were preserved, the windows were replaced with new energy-efficient replicas having the exact profile and details of the original windows, down to how the glass is divided. SV Design worked closely with the manufacturer to create the replicas to ensure they were ultimately approved by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, which is an extensive process involving multiple rounds of review. The new windows look as if they could be 100 years old, but have insulated glass, thermal breaks, and are up to today’s building code with modern energy efficiency.

Elaborate casework in the science labs was carefully removed and reinstalled in common amenity spaces such as the community room and lobby, as a visible reminder of the original use of the building. Trim and chalkboards in the apartment units remain exposed in the living rooms and some bedrooms, along with original built-in casework storage.

The most significant challenge in this historic preservation and adaptive reuse project was bringing the 100-year-old building up to today’s code and modern design standards, affecting the mechanical, electrical, and elevator systems and accessibility issues.

Careful consideration was given to preserving the school’s beloved Italian Renaissance Revival auditorium with striking coffered ceilings, along with transforming the former gymnasium with beautiful, exposed trusses into a community room, library, and fitness space.

Beverly Village for Living & the Arts will be certified LEED Silver and comply with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation as the project is eligible for historic tax credits.

Read more about the adaptive reuse of Briscoe Middle School into Beverly Village for Living & the Arts in this Insights article.