Visit Date: February 23, 2011
Sign Status: All exterior signs removed in 2013
Interior signs presumed removed
The Guild Elementary school is located in East Boston’s Orient Heights section, with entrances on both Ashley Street and Leyden Street.
At the time of the visit, there were 4 exterior signs on the building: 1 on both street entrances of the school, and one at each side entrance of the school.
Entrance and sign as seen from Ashley Street.
Side entrance from firehouse parking lot on Ashley Street. A closeup of this sign shows a capacity of 185.
Another side entrance into the play lot.
Another view of the play lot sign; artsy and more colorful.
On the Leyden Street side of the school is the main entrance, which had an exterior sign noting a capacity of 700.
Once you enter the school from the Leyden Street sign, two interior signs point to a stairway to the basement area. It seemed that the interior hallways acted as shelter areas. Inside there were a total of 5 interior signs.
A closeup of the first interior sign shows the two arrows, which were missing, pointing to an adjacent door.
The sign over the adjacent door shows the arrow pointing down, denoting the way to the shelter area.
Oddly, the basement itself did not have any signs in it.
Other interior hallways had shelter signs leading to them. The signs were above hallway entrances in the stairs, with one just inside the Ashley Street side entrance. There were no signs in the hallways themselves, which was the case in some schools.
The last two pictures show the sign just inside the side entrance on Ashley Street off of the firehouse parking lot. A closeup shows the arrow pointing inward, and in order to reach the shelter area, you had to climb the stairs to the interior hallway.
Overall, this was a large structure, but it is unknown why two different capacities are listed on two different signs. One guess is the unmarked basement area was the 700 capacity, while the interior hallway was 185. The possibility also exists that one was mis-marked, but sign placement was done very carefully so I doubt that is the case. Both areas did connect to each other without having to exit, but the capacities are separated.
The building underwent renovation in 2013 and all the exterior signs were removed at this time. The interior signs are also presumed to have been removed.
Fallout Five Zero
Fallout Five Zero 