The Buckingham School started in a wooden two-story building constructed on the site of a pear orchard at the corner of Buckingham Street and Buckingham Place and opened in 1892. That building, today known as Markham House, still stands. In 1921 the school expanded three additional grades to include college preparation and needing additional space acquired the contiguous property along Parker Street, where it built the large brick building that still occupies the site. In 1924 the school purchased four acres of land on Larch Road, near Fresh Pond, for use in physical education, which continues to serve BB&N's athletic program despite the City of Cambridge House Authority's narrowly averted attempt in 1968 to seize the land by eminent domain to build housing for the aged. In 1929 the school acquired another private home known then and ever since as Kelsey House.