Then & Now: Do you know where this is?

On Jan. 23, 1953, with their neighborhood school about to close for good, students gathered their belongings in paper bags. They planned to walk to their new home, a nearby school that had recently been expanded.

The teachers, referenced in a Worcester Telegram story as Miss Ruth W. Power and Miss Susan H. Horan, explained to their young students that their familiar school was getting old, too costly to repair. It was built 90 years earlier.

As they gathered in the first-floor corridor before departing, Miss Power and Miss Horan called for a proper send-off. The teachers led the students in the singing of "Auld Lang Syne."

The brick school — shown in this week's Then photo, from 1952 — sat vacant for a year or so before being razed. Shortly before the wrecking ball arrived, the city placed a classified advertisement in the newspaper: For sale, 150,000 bricks.

The land where the school once sat was eventually purchased by a family-owned business that was ready to expand. A new headquarters, with a price tag of $45,000, was built on the parcel.

The business remains, still family run, nowhere close to offering the farewell that once filled its land.

See Monday's Telegram & Gazette, and telegram.com, for the answer.