Location and Facilities

The Butera School of Art occupies its own five-story brownstone at 111 Beacon Street in the exclusive Back Bay area of Boston, adjacent to the Public Garden and only a short distance from the Arlington Street MBTA station.  (See map on back inside cover.) 

Originally built as a townhouse, the building was formerly occupied by the Erskine School, a girls’ finishing school, which shared some of its facilities with nearby Emerson College.  In the late 1940s, the building was purchased by Butera School of Art.

The main offices are located on the first floor, with an exhibit area occupying the main hall.  The upper floors each contain two classrooms per floor, illuminated by both natural and planned fluorescent lights.  These classrooms house from 10 to 15 students and contain a drawing table for each student.  Commercial Art classes will have a maximum of 30 students per floor.  Students execute their work from their own tables in an individual studio or shop environment.  Classrooms for the first year of Sign Painting are set up in a flexible format that can accommodate up to 25 students each for a total class size of 50 students each.  The lower level (basement) of the building consists of one very large room containing long sign benches specifically designed for the senior sign painters. In this area, which can accommodate up to 35 students, seniors have access to spray booths and an air compressor for airbrush work.  Also located in the basement is the sign painters’ computer lab:  computers, scanners, and plotters.

The building has designated areas for use of various types of equipment - opaque projectors, overhead projectors, and two computer labs, one for training on MACs and one for training on PCs.