The Home for Little Wanderers (The Home) is a nationally renowned, private, non-profit child and family service agency. It has been part of the Massachusetts landscape for over 200 years, making it the oldest agency of its kind in the nation and one of the largest in New England. Originally founded as a orphanage in 1799, The Home today plays a leadership role in delivering services to thousands of children and families each year through a system of residential, community-based and prevention programs, direct care services, and advocacy. The Home’s mission is to ensure the healthy behavioral, emotional, social and educational development and physical well-being of children and families living in at-risk circumstances. The Home’s work is guided by a belief in the right of all children to be safe, nurtured and developed to reach their full potential.
Founded in 1940, The Home’s Longview Farm facility provides a year-round residential and day school treatment program for boys aged 10 ½ to 18 who have a wide range of emotional, behavioral, educational and psychiatric issues. Longview Farm currently has a residential capacity of 22 students and provides services including individualized treatment plans, a year-round outdoor education/adventure program, psychological and educational evaluations and assessments and pre-vocational training.
Beals and Thomas, Inc. (B+T) was retained by The Home in 2008 to assist with the engineering associated with an expansion to the Knight Children’s Center at its Jamaica Plain campus. Due to increased operating costs and various program changes The Home soon decided to relocate the Knight Children’s Center from Jamaica Plain to the Longview Farm campus. B+T quickly switched the focus from the challenges of redeveloping an extremely constrained urban site, to the challenges associated with new development within a residential and suburban setting.
Even without the proposed consolidation, the 16,000 sf existing school building at Longview Farm was deemed inadequate for the current school programs. The classrooms were undersized, space for art, music and science were non-existent and the existing building was in need of improved mechanical systems.
The Home sought-out the services of Roundel 47, an architecture firm specializing in the design of education facilities, and owner’s project managers, Northstar Project & Real Estate Services. The project team was engaged to provide design and permitting services to remedy these deficiencies by renovating and expanding the existing school building, providing additional classroom space, and to replace many of the mechanical systems with energy efficient systems and make much needed repairs to aging infrastructure.
Great effort was put forth into the architectural design of the structures in order to make them fit with the rural character of the residential neighborhood setting. The scale of the buildings is consistent with other buildings in the area and the materials utilized will be residential in nature . The configuration of the school addition is such to take advantage of the site topography to minimize the overall mass, while avoiding existing ledge to the extent practicable. The resultant building will create a central courtyard to be utilized as outdoor classroom space as well as a quiet location for meetings with students and counselors.
After completing a rigorous permitting process with local authorities, work has recently begun on the school expansion which consists of the construction of a 31,000sf, two-story addition to provide the necessary classroom space for the existing and relocated student population, as well as increased clinical offices and associated school facilities. Bowdoin Construction has been selected as the construction manager.
Two additional residential buildings are proposed as part of this project. These structures will consist of student bedrooms, resident staff office space, a residential style kitchen and common areas. An existing older dormitory that is in need of structural repair and systems upgrades will be replaced with two small 2,600sf residential cottages.
Upon completion of the project, Longview Farm will be the home for an expanded program for boys and girls between the ages of 5 to 17 years old, where they will enjoy the new facilities as well as utilize and engage in exciting activities such as the existing swimming pool, Project Adventure ropes challenge course, putting green, fishing and ice skating pond, putting green, hiking and nature trails, growing their own food in vegetable and herb gardens and orchard.
The experiences this setting provides will help the children to gain self-esteem, learn to take risks, and acquire basic skills that they can apply in their own community after they have left The Home’s care.
David J. LaPointe, RLA, LEED® AP is an associate at Beals and Thomas, Inc.