The officers' quarters and the administration and ASA training buildings were built in the same Colonial Revival style that's found on most US military bases built in the period between world wars.
Our quadruplex had two units on the first floor and two on the second floor. Our unit was the westernmost unit on the second floor. The living room and my parents bedroom looked out over the main street, Chancellorsville, and the marching field. That side was officially the front of the house. The kitchen, and the main bathroom, looked out the back at a service alley and across it, a wooded area, with mostly birch trees. My bedroom would also have looked out on the service alley, but attached to my room was an airy covered porch, screened on three sides. It became a deluxe play room, where I could be indoors but feel outdoors. My parents completely left it to me.
They had their own play room: another covered porch had been attached to the far end of the house with three entrances. You could get there from my room, from the main hall down the middle of the unit, or from a small bathroom that was connected to my parents' bedroom. This porch may have originally been open on three sides like my play area, but someone had decided to build windows, so it became a sunny second living room. My parents treated it as a party room and family retreat. It was the place they invited their best friends, keeping the mere acquaintances to the formal living room.
The Sun Porch, as we called it (as opposed to the Play Porch) got all the Hawaiian furniture which now came out of storage, so it took on a tropical look.
Fort Devens covered more than two square miles. It was decommissioned in the 90s. The old wooden structures like the Kindergarten building were all torn down, but most of the brick buildings were kept to form the Devens Community Center. The map below is based on a current satellite image, and only shows about a third of the total area of the base.
Some of the street names have changed. Chancellorsville became Elm. What is called Walnut Street on the map was called Detrobian Street in 1954. On the other hand Sherman and MacArthur Avenues were called the same back then, so not all the names have changed, maybe not the majority of them. Between MacArthur and El Caney, almost none of the structures were wooden, so nearly all the buildings in that part of the map are as they were then. One notable exception is the nursery which was a wooden structure on the west side of Sherman Avenue.
Another change, not having to do with the structures, is that the golf course appears to have shrunk. Formerly the golf course had fairways on either side of the marching field. Once I caddied for my Father and a golfing partner, and remember how, as we finished the holes to the west of Sherman Avenue, we had to walk across the marching field with the clubs to get to the final holes.
I've marked a building at the top as "Devens grade school." It actually only had first and second grades. I believe it had a total of 160 to 170 children in four classrooms, two to a grade. South and a little west of that, and up a slight hill you can't see in this view, I've marked a complex as the ASA School where my Father taught. I'm guessing slightly. It may have had other functions. Somewhere on the end of the base was the enlisted men's barracks, either in that complex or further east. Or the school may have been further east. I'm more sure about base headquarters which was a much smaller building on the other side of Sherman Ave.
Next door to the alleged ASA School, across a parking lot, was the main Fort Devens theater. It was one of the first new places I visited on base once we settled in, as my parents dumped me off for an all-day cartoon marathon. I got to know it very well, and would never confuse it with a school or barracks. Saturday matinee double features for kids were a dime!
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