Gabriela Figuereo, an intern working with the Dorchester Historical Society, spoke outside the Great Hall during a walking tour of Codman Square last Saturday. Meggie Quackenbush photo

If you’re looking for examples of the varied architectural styles New England has to offer, look no further than Dorchester’s Codman Square, a neighborhood known for its thriving business district and rich history.

A recent walking tour of Dorchester’s Codman Square, held on May 2 and sponsored by the Dorchester Historical Society, sought to draw attention to the historic buildings in this dynamic neighborhood, according to Earl Taylor, president of the society.

“One of the most prominent things about Codman Square is how much it’s changed,” said Taylor.

The society hosts about one walking tour in a Dorchester neighborhood per year, and has held tours of Lower Mills and Savin Hill in the past. This year, the society decided to branch out into a neighborhood it had yet to engage.

“This tour is different because it isn’t a traditional ‘pretty house’ tour, like some of our other walking tours in Dorchester,” said Taylor.

Taylor worked with the society’s intern, Gabriela Figuereo, to piece together archival research and oral histories for the tour, which focused an “urban re-purposing” theme. Figuereo, a Boston University sophomore pursuing a degree in architectural studies, said the theme comes from the Codman Square community’s efforts to preserve and reuse old structures that were built in styles ranging from Greek revival to Georgian and Federalist.

“You don’t always hear about how far it’s come—from a farming district to a business center,” she said.

The tour began at the Codman Square branch of the Boston Public Library, built in 1978 on the site of the iconic old Henry L. Pierce public school, which served Codman students from 1892 until it burned in 1970. Anne Grady, a Codman Square resident who attended the walking tour, was a teacher at the Pierce school in the late 1960s when racial tensions were high and “white flight” from the neighborhood left many lots and properties vacant. She said that in a single year, the school went from being a mixture of white and black students to being 100 percent black in 1969.

“It was just a transformation overnight,” she said. Despite the tensions, Grady said those who lived in the area during that time—white and black alike—were able to come together over the years and ultimately have built a stronger community.

Other stops on the tour included the shingled Global Ministries Christian Church, originally home to the nineteenth-century Dorchester Temple Baptist Church, and the monumental, yellow-bricked Renaissance revival-style Dorchester High School building, which was recently turned into apartments.

These distinctive buildings demonstrate the tremendous market for adaptive reuse—the process of using an old building for a new purpose—in Codman Square, according to Taylor.

“The people here are realizing it’s valuable to renovate and restore,” he said. He thinks that the walking tour will highlight the neighborhood’s potential as a destination for tourists and developers. Figuereo agreed, and said she thinks many residents are enthusiastic about the creative ways older buildings can be given new life.

“It’s a challenge to reuse them, but it’s worth it,” she said. “If the history is rich enough, people are willing to preserve it.”