Lyceum Hall
Dorchester Illustration 2634
This photograph of the Lyceum Hall was published in the Dorchester Community News 1978.
Lyceum Hall on Meeting House Hill served as a public gathering place for many Dorchester activities. It was built in 1839 and dedicated in 1840 and located between First Church and East Street facing the Dorchester Town Common.
Horace Mann (advocate for American public education) spoke at the dedication of the building, which was intended to host events and public discussions that would provide an educational benefit to the residents of Dorchester. Some of the topics included, discussions of the abolition of slavery, recruitment for the Civil War, the annexation of Dorchester to Boston, and lectures by traveling speakers from all over the country on the lyceum speaker circuit.
The lyceum movement was an early form of organized adult education. Among the well-known speakers who participated were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Daniel Webster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Susan B. Anthony.
The first Roman Catholic Mass on Meeting House Hill took place in the building as did the first Episcopalian Mass in Dorchester.
The school department used the building in the twentieth century for special needs students and for shop classes such as mechanical arts, woodworking and other purposes. The building was demolished in 1955.