A Walk Up Pine Street Hill

After looking at the plaque of the Boathouse on Pleasant St from Stop 6,, come back up to Ames Street and walkers should now cross Ames St. again at the crosswalk at the Powder House. ( Before you cross, if stairs are cleared of brush, take a quick walk to the top and look to the river view)

Walkers will backtrack down Ames St. to the corner of Bridge St./109 where you will cross Bridge St. to Pine St. (use X-Walk at Pam's Market).*Crosswalks in island may not operational yet ( 0.5 mi )Stop

7 A walk up the Pine Street Hill

While walking up Pine St on the sidewalk side, notice the rock wall across the street which encompasses The Noble & Greenough School property.

●       7A Bingham Greenhouses less than (0.25 mile)

Walkers will cross Violet Ave. and stop to notice the big white house on your right. This house is now owned by The Noble & Greenough School, but it was the Bingham Florist’s home, and their greenhouses were behind the house and all the way down Violet Ave. to Hillcrest Ave.

●       7B The Noble & Greenough School

Walkers should now look across Pine St. to the entrance of The Noble & Greenough School.

Noble and Greenough School ( based on Noble’s website):

Nobles was founded in 1866 by George Washington Copp Noble, in Boston, Massachusetts, as an all-boys prep school for Harvard University. It became known as Noble & Greenough in 1892.

During World War I, the school merged with Boston-based Volkman School, which had faced a drastically declining student population due to the headmaster's German origins. There is a monument to the Volkman School on the Nobles campus. In 1922, the school moved from Boston to its current location in Dedham. The property had previously been the estate of Albert W. Nickerson. The grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The school discontinued its lower school at this time, which caused parents to start the Dexter School, to fill the gap created. In 1975, Nobles began admitting girls.

One of the distinctive architectural structures on campus is the Nickerson Castle (now just called "The Castle") was built in 1890 for railroad tycoon Albert W. Nickerson. It was designed by Boston architect H.H. Richardson. Noble’s school bought it in 1921 and now uses the castle as a home for dining services and as a place to live for boarders and faculty members. Albert W. Nickerson first arrived in Dedham in 1877. He was the president of Arlington Mills in Lawrence, MA and director of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway where he took an active part in community affairs and made generous donations to charitable causes. Nickerson bought a parcel of land in Dedham, a 600-acre (2.4 km2) estate on the Charles known as Riverdale. The estate was the boyhood home of ambassador and historian John Lothrop Motley, who obtained the land from Edward H. Penniman

 In 1886 he commissioned the architectural firm of Henry Hobson Richardson to build him a castle on the estate and hired Frederick Law Olmsted's firm to do the landscaping. The castle has several interesting architectural elements, but its most famous is by far its numerous secret passages and legendary underground mazes and hallways. It was built on top of a rocky hill so that the Castle and the River appeared magically to carriages or cars arriving through the forested Pine Street entrance. There are rumored to be many secret passages in the Castle. When the building served as the boys' dormitory, many would sneak out in the night to explore the building. The legend that surrounds this tradition is that there is a passageway that has never been found by anyone, but is supposed to extend from the castle, underground, to the other side of the Charles River. The student who finds this passage is supposed to be granted free tuition to the school until they graduate.

●       7C Volk Cow Farm  (500 ft)

Staying on the sidewalk side, continuing walking up Pine St. next to the Bingham Greenhouses was the Volk Cow Farm. The farm extended from Stivaletta Dr. to Eaton Rd (up further on sidewalk side). and backed up to Commonwealth Ave.

●       7D Animal Rescue League 

Walkers can look across the street and the entrance to the Animal Rescue League.

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