We recommend walking into the MSPCA complex and finding a shady spot.
This complex has a long history of housing various institutions. It started out in the 1890s with the Perkins School for the Blind operating their first “kindergarten” for blind children here. The Perkins School used this term for a school that served children up to 5th grade. Helen Keller, the most famous graduate of the Perkins School visited with the students here to inspire them in their studies. (None of the Perkins School buildings remain - but pictured for this stop).
In 1912, the Perkins School consolidated all of its services when it purchased its present site in Watertown. The complex was sold to the Archdiocese of Boston. They opened a boy’s orphanage (using the term loosely) that was called the House of the Angel Guardian (HAG to the occupants). The brick wall we just walked around was built to keep the boys inside. HAG was little better than a reform school in an era when child-serving residential institutions were less concerned with nurturing youngsters as they are today.
In 1951 the Archdiocese built a minor seminary here as a preparatory institution to St. John’s in Brighton. These are the brick buildings we see now. The seminary here was named Cardinal O’Connell Seminary and it operated until 1968. It was named for Boston’s first Cardinal, William O’Connell who was elevated in 1911. O’Connell believed in “separatist integration” – the idea that Irish Catholics should have separate but equal institutions in Boston. He promoted the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) instead of the Protestant Boy Scouts and the building of major catholic institutions like Boston College and the College of the Sacred Heart to mirror Harvard or Wellesley Colleges.
The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) moved to this complex in 1976 (from their former site on Longwood Avenue). The MSPCA and American Humane Education Society (AHES) were both founded by Dr. George Angell and have a national reputation. Besides being the headquarters of those two organizations, the Angell Animal Medical Center is located here. In recent years, MSPCA has bowed to community pressure and began changing aspects of the institutional wall to make it a bit more friendly and open.