Peace Dale Neighborhood Guild

This masonry building resembling a Neo-Colonial schoolhouse was the benefaction of a member of a later generation of Hazards, Augusta Hazard in memory of her husband, John Newbold. She had founded the guild in 1903, at the height of the Arts and Crafts Movement in America, as a center to teach industrial arts to women and children. It met initially in the upstairs hall of the store block (see immediately below). It continues as a very active community center for the region. Russell Sturgis, a Boston architect who married into the Hazard family, is responsible for the design both of the guild and of the pretty park fronting it at the center of the village. Stemming from some of the same impulses as the guild movement is the kindergarten movement, embodied in the Stepping Stone Kindergarten (1916–1917), nearby at 30 Spring Street. Margaret Hazard became fascinated with the kindergarten movement during a trip to Germany in 1891. She brought a German teacher to Peace Dale and set up a kindergarten at The Homestead. After her death, her daughter, Caroline, continued to support it, eventually providing for the kindergarten on Spring Street, a square, stuccoed building with a hipped roof and entrance projection which is typical of functional school buildings of its period.