The City's First High School - Corner of Main and Franklin Streets:

Past the Hubbard house, you’ll come to Main Street Middle School as you near the end of Franklin. This started out in 1914 as the city’s first public high school. The current high school, built in 1956, is at the edge of town at the intersection of Memorial Drive and Bailey Avenue.

Once you reach Main Street, we’ll be turning right to make our way back to the center of town, but if you just can’t get enough of our architectural treasures, you can make a quick detour about a hundred feet up to the school’s parking lot to look across the street at a building that represents one of our finest examples of the French Second Empire style, built around 1880.

If you walk past to look at it from the side, it might remind you just a little bit of the Addams Family house. Moving back down Main Street, you’ll pass the intersection with Liberty Street, which I noted as an Off the Beaten Path recommendation in Tour #1. The Liberty/Loomis Street neighborhood offers more views of handsome and festively painted old homes.