Historical Sketch

The Cotting School was founded in 1893 in Boston as the Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children by Drs. Augustus Thorndike and Edward Hickling Bradford and was incorporated on 27 March 1894 by Thorndike and Bradford, Edward Pierson Beebe, Joseph S. Bigelow, Elliot G. Brackett, E. H. Clement, and George B. Upham. It was the first private and free day school for children with disabilities in North America, providing education and special training to children and young adults with physical disabilities. It was influenced by handicraft-based education, known as sloyd education, begun in Finland in 1865. The goal was to educate and train students so they were able to support themselves after finishing school. While at school, students also received free dinners and medical supervision. Students often came to the school as outpatients from Boston Children's Hospital after being referred by orthopedic surgeons, including Bradford and Thorndike.

The first class met in October 1894 at St. Andrew's Hall at 38 Chambers Street. It consisted of seven students and was taught by Mary M. Perry, who was unpaid at the time and later became the school's first superintendent. From early on, transportation was provided for the children by the Armstrong Transfer Company, first with horse-drawn carriages and later with buses. The school relied on public support to continue its free services and to provide the resources and facilities needed to offer primary and junior high school education, as well as training in various trades, such as cane seating, basketry, sewing, dressmaking, and printing. This was mainly achieved through donations, legacies, and gifts. The school held numerous fairs where products made by students were sold, the proceeds going to the school's operating costs, building its treasury, and providing supplies and materials to students to continue their training. Industrial students were also paid for their time working in their chosen trade department while at school.

In 1895, the school moved to 6 Turner Street, where it expanded to 26 students. A branch was also opened by volunteer teachers at the Ravensbourne Home in Arlington, Massachusetts, which operated until 1904. After moving to a larger space at 424 Newbury Street in 1897, the first graduating class of the Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children in 1901 consisted of five students graduating at the eighth-grade level. Prior to this in 1900, the school purchased land at 241 St. Botolph Street and began construction on a new and larger building, under the leadership of Francis Joy Cotting. Cotting had been elected president of the board of trustees in 1899 after serving as a trustee and secretary of numerous committees. The new building was completed for the start of the 1904-1905 school year, opened with 65 students, and later reached 150 students. The new space allowed the school to expand its printing, sewing, cobbling, and cane seating departments. In 1907, it added gymnastic training and recreation to its curriculum and an open-air classroom in 1912.

In 1922, the school purchased an adjacent lot on St. Botolph Street to expand its building to include rooms for a four-year high school, as well as further industrial training for junior high school graduates. Stone and Webster were hired to construct the new building, which added 100 feet to the facade of the existing structure. It opened for the beginning of the 1926-1927 school year. The new building was used for industrial and vocational training, which opened space to expand classroom use in the old building. Also added was an assembly hall, dedicated to Francis Joy Cotting who died in 1914, and a library and committee meeting room dedicated to Dr. Edward H. Bradford following his death in 1926. 1922 was also the year that Francis's nephew Charles Edward Cotting joined the board of trustees, also becoming treasurer in 1927, beginning an almost 60-year-long involvement that drastically grew the school's endowment capital.

The school also provided numerous enrichment and recreational programs to its students as early as 1896, with summer vacations and day trips to Lancaster, Massachusetts; Children's Island Sanitarium in Marblehead, Massachusetts; Camp Hemenway in Canton, Massachusetts; and an annual apple picking and picnic trip to Charles E. Cotting's farm in Berlin, Massachusetts, called Chedco Farm.

By the 1940s, the school had a well-established program that consisted of five facets that focused on academic, industrial, vocational, physical, and social opportunities for students. This included a first grade through high school curriculum; industrial training at increasing levels of advancement as students entered higher grades, with prevocational activities such as weaving, basketry, papercutting, clay modeling, cane seating, woodworking, book binding, printing, sewing, cooking, cobbling, and then more intensive vocational courses to prepare each student for a job in their chosen field; care of their physical wellbeing overseen by the school's medical director, who would cooperate with hospitals, clinics, and family physicians on the students' behalf with support from nurses, who also acted as social workers, and physio therapists; and social activities to ensure students engaged in activities such as sports, play, clubs, and social meetings that would build confidence, communication skills, and group cooperation.

In 1948, the school changed its name to the Industrial School for Crippled Children and then the Cotting School for Handicapped Children in 1974. It was around this time that the school also expanded to include students with learning and communication disabilities before merging with the Krebs School Foundation of Lexington in 1986. After selling its property at 241 St. Botolph Street to the New England Conservatory in 1987, the school moved to a newly constructed facility at 453 Concord Avenue in Lexington, Massachusetts.