Demolition of the Hartwell pods began on August 14 starting with Pod C, which housed LEAP until June 2025. They’re being cleared to make way for the new community center, which is slated for completion in late fall 2026. It will house the Council on Aging and Human Services and the Parks and Recreation Department as well as LEAP.
The pods were designed by famed Modernist architect Henry Hoover (who also designed the Brooks School complex across the ballfield) and built between 1959 and 1964 to accommodate the growing number of schoolchildren in town — including the Lincoln Squirrel’s Alice Waugh, who attended kindergarten in the Pod C classroom closest to the main Hartwell building.
“It’s a bittersweet, generational moment. We’re excited to see the first big milestone for construction of the community center, but we’re also sad to see the demolition of a building where so many memories were made,” said Community Center Building Committee Chair Sarah Chester.
See the Lincoln Squirrel’s short video of the Pod C demolition, as well as more photos and information in the Owners’ Project Manager’s monthly report to the CCBC on August 13, 2025.
While I understand the need for a community center, I feel a pang of sadness that the pods are coming tumbling down… The pods served as my 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms when the “boomers” maxed out Hartwell’s capacity, and my mom and Esther Braun taught 4th and 5th grade together in one of them for 15 years. They have served us well.
Yes, they also served my kids who loved their Hartwell home(s).
Parents fretted over conditions, but kids felt safe and nurtured in those small, intimate spaces that looked out into the woods.
Play was right outside those doors.
We adults were not so good at seeing those spaces through the eyes of our kids.