Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall (often known as Choate; ) is a private, co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Choate is currently ranked as the second best boarding school and third best private high school in America. Founded in 1890, it took its present name and began a co-educational system with the 1971 merger of The Choate School for boys and Rosemary Hall for girls. It is part of the Eight Schools Association and the Ten Schools Admissions Organization. Its alumni include many members of the American political elite.

History

Early years

The schools that would eventually become Choate Rosemary Hall were begun by members of two prominent New England families, the Choates and Atwaters.

Rosemary Hall was founded in 1890 by Mary Atwater Choate at Rosemary Farm in Wallingford, her girlhood home and the summer residence of her and her husband, William Gardner Choate. Mary, an alumna of Miss Porter's School, was the great-granddaughter of Caleb Atwater (1741–1832), a Connecticut merchant magnate who supplied the American forces during the Revolutionary War. In 1775 General George Washington visited the Atwater store in Wallingford en route to assuming command of the Continental Army. On that occasion, Washington took tea with Judge Oliver Stanley at the "Red House" (built 1690–1750), now Squire Stanley House on the Choate campus.

In 1878 Mary Atwater Choate had co-founded a vocational organization for Civil War widows, the New York Exchange for Women's Work, a prototype of many such exchanges across the country (it survived until 2003). In 1889, Mary planned a new institution on the same principle of female self-sufficiency, and she advertised in ''The New York Times'' for a headmistress to run a school that would train girls in the "domestic arts." The advertisement was answered by Caroline Ruutz-Rees (1865–1954), a 25-year-old Briton teaching in New Jersey.

On October 3, 1890, the ''New Haven Morning News'' reported: "The opening of Rosemary Hall took place at Wallingford yesterday ... at the beautiful Rosemary Farms, which have been the property of Mrs. Choate's family for five generations. ... Rev. Edward Everett Hale addressed the school girls in his inimitable way, at once attractive and helpful. 'Never forget,' said he, 'that it is a great art to do what you do well. If you limp, limp well, and if you dance, dance well'."

The eight arriving girls occupied the original school building, "old Atwater House" (built 1758), located at the northwest corner of Christian and Elm streets, where the new Atwater House now stands. They also used "Atwater homestead" (built 1774, now known as Homestead), which stands at the center of the present-day campus, on the northeast corner of Christian and Elm streets.

Caroline Ruutz-Rees (pronounced "roots-reece," the first syllable rhyming with "foot"), headmistress of Rosemary Hall until 1938, was a figure of extraordinary personality and influence, a militant feminist and suffragist of national prominence. On the Wallingford golf course, she wore bloomers, which shocked the locals, and on buggy rides to Wallingford station, she carried a pistol. She quickly changed Rosemary Hall's mission from "domestic arts" to that of a contemporary boys' school.

The Choate School was founded by William and Mary Choate in 1896. William Gardner Choate (1830–1921), Harvard class of 1852, was U.S. District Judge for the Southern Circuit of New York from 1878 to 1881, and afterward a partner of Shipman, Barlow, Laroque, and Choate. He was a national authority on admiralty, railroad, bankruptcy, and corporation law. Like his younger, more famous brother, he was a prominent club man (Harvard and The Century). That brother was Joseph Hodges Choate, lawyer, a prosecutor of the Tweed Ring, and Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

William and Mary Choate invited Mark Pitman (1830–1905), their tenant in the aforementioned Red House, to start a boys' school under their sponsorship. Pitman, Bowdoin class of 1859, was 66 years old, a widower, and had been principal of Woolsey School in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1872. He accepted the Choates' offer, not least perhaps because it would employ his unmarried adult daughters, Leila, Elizabeth, and Helen. Six boys entered the new school in fall term 1896, their average age about ten. Four of the six lived in Red House with the Pitmans, the first of many periods when Red House (now Squire Stanley House) has served as a dormitory for the youngest students.

Pitman taught Latin, English, history, and science; Elizabeth taught art, Helen piano, and Leila was a writing teacher and school nurse. Mary Choate's physician brother, Huntington Atwater, taught crafts and was a school doctor. There was no formal relationship with the Choates' other foundation, Rosemary Hall, a hundred yards to the east on Christian Street, but there were coeducational audiences for plays and recitals, and Mary Choate hosted dances at the Homestead.

In 1897, the boys' school erected Choate House across the street from Red House, the first purpose-built institutional building (and John F. Kennedy's dormitory in 1931-2). It contained recitation rooms, an infirmary, a dining room, and housing for fifteen boys. In 1899 Choate House was the venue for the first "Junior Dance", but a year later, the Rosemary girls would depart for a seventy-one-year absence.

The official history of Choate Rosemary Hall, written by Tom Generous, says that the rift between Caroline Ruutz-Rees and Mary Choate, proponents of two very different sorts of feminism, was public knowledge as early as 1896. In that year, the two women did not share the lectern at Prize Day, and local newspapers published "denials" of a rumor that Ruutz-Rees would leave the school. But by 1900, the headmistress and her educational style had acquired influential champions among the students' parents, and two of them, residents of Greenwich, Connecticut, joined forces to effect the removal of the school to their town.

Shipping magnate Nathaniel Witherell donated of land in the Rock Ridge section of Greenwich. Julian Curtiss gathered a group of investors and established a joint-stock corporation funded through the sale of six-percent bonds. Ruutz-Rees was the chief shareholder. The Greenwich residence of Rosemary Hall began in the fall term 1900 when 57 girl students moved into the Main Building, known as "The School", a U-shaped shingled house on Zaccheus Mead Lane.

In Wallingford, Mark Pitman died on December 3, 1905. Until 1908 Sumner Blakemore was titular headmaster, but the school was effectively the domain of the three Pitman sisters. At the 1908 graduation ceremony, the Japanese Consul General watched his countryman Noyobu Masuda give the valedictory address. Then Judge Choate introduced the man who would assume the headmastership in the fall, George St. John, and his wife, Clara Seymour St. John. She was a Bryn Mawr alumna, member of a well-connected Connecticut family, sister of future (1937–1951) Yale president Charles Seymour, and descendant of Yale president (1740–1766) Thomas Clap.

George Clair St. John (1877–1966), Harvard class of 1902 and aged 31 in the fall of 1908, had grown up on a farm in Hoskins Station, Connecticut. He was an ordained Episcopal priest. He had taught at The Hill School in Pennsylvania and Adirondack-Florida School, and was teaching at Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., when Samuel Dutton of Columbia Teachers College recruited him for the headmastership. St. John "knew, long before I read Mr. Dutton's letter, that I wanted some day to have a school of my own. In my thought about it, Dean Briggs was my first text." This was LeBaron Russell Briggs, dean of men at Harvard when St. John was there and afterward dean of the faculty until 1925. Briggs, St. John wrote, "fathered the whole college", and the St. Johns too would serve ''in loco parentis''.

Their first move to secure parental powers was decisive. In September 1909, as the official history tells it, the St. Johns "signed with the Choates an 'Agreement to Lease and Purchase.' Under its terms, the younger couple rented the school, its property and reputation, for five years at a sum equal to 11 percent of The Choate School's net income per year. ... Less than twenty months later, on May 12, 1911, St. John reported to the trustees that he had purchased the title to the school by acquiring mortgages of roughly $41,000. He resold the title in turn to The Choate School, Incorporated, for $23,000 cash and $38,000 in stock ... For all intents and purposes, The Choate School belonged to George St. John."

In his first quarter-century as headmaster, St. John created much of Choate as it is regarded today. Of the Georgian brick and stone campus, he had built by 1932 Hill House, West Wing, the Gymnasium, Memorial House, the Chapel, the Library, the Winter Exercise Building, and Archbold Infirmary, which was the largest school infirmary in the country. He grew the enrollment from 35 to 505 boys and the faculty from 5 to 64 masters. In the decade following the First World War (classes of 1918 to 1928), Choate sent 412 of its 618 graduates to Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, according to a table published in ''The Choate News'' in fall term 1928.

George St. John belonged to the generation of legendary, long-serving headmasters who shaped the New England prep school, chief among whom were Endicott Peabody of Groton School, Frank Boyden of Deerfield Academy, Horace Dutton Taft of Taft School, Frederick Sill of Kent School, Samuel Drury of St. Paul's School, Alfred Stearns of Phillips Academy Andover, Lewis Perry of Phillips Exeter Academy, and George Van Santvoord of Hotchkiss School.

The Rev. George St. John of Choate was succeeded in 1947 by his son, the Rev. Seymour St. John '31 (1912–2006), and the "St. John dynasty" was continued to 1973. Seymour was Yale class of 1935 and was ordained after graduating from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1942. During his time as head, he built as many buildings as his father had built, greatly broadened the curriculum, raised the national profile of the school, and made it more progressive (Eleanor Roosevelt, Norman Thomas, and William Sloane Coffin were regular speakers) and cosmopolitan (Russian, Near Eastern, and Afro-American studies centers were founded, and Russian, Chinese, and Arabic courses were begun). St. John was a longtime advocate of coeducation and initiated the Choate-Rosemary contacts. At his death, headmaster Edward Shanahan told the ''New York Times'', "The merger demanded an enormous expenditure of resources by Choate because the building of a new campus was to occur within the footprints of its property. Seymour was central to the decision to expand those resources."

JFK, the Muckers, and "Ask not"

In 1931 John F. Kennedy entered Choate as a third form (9th grade) student, following his older brother Joe Jr., who was a star athlete at the school. Jack Kennedy—sickly, underweight, and nicknamed Rat Face by his schoolfellows—spent his first two years at Choate in his brother's shadow, and compensated for it with rebellious behavior that attracted a coterie. He named his group The Muckers Club, which had thirteen members—Kennedy and twelve disciples. Among these was Kennedy's lifelong inseparable friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings, who kept an apartment in the White House during JFK's presidency.

As Headmaster of Choate, George St. John's chapel talks included a recurring phrase that was widely remembered by Choate alumni. In 2008, school archivist Judy Donald found the phrase in St. John's notebooks, and in 2011 journalist Chris Matthews published the discovery in his biography of JFK. St. John's phrase (borrowed from Harvard dean LeBaron Briggs) was, "The youth who loves his alma mater will always ask not 'What can she do for me?' but 'What can I do for her?'" Speculation that this was the original of JFK's inaugural address "Ask not" goes back at least as far as a 1966 ''Time'' magazine article, and several of JFK's Choate contemporaries noticed the echo in 1961. Kennedy graduated from Choate in 1935. In senior class polling for the yearbook (of which he was business manager), Kennedy was voted Most Likely to Succeed.

Timeline

* 1889: Mary Atwater Choate advertises in New York for a headmistress.
* 1890: Foundation of Rosemary Hall; Caroline Ruutz-Rees begins 48 years as headmistress; 8 girls enroll. October 2, opening ceremonies held.
* 1891: First election of Optima, or best girl; the honor was bestowed until 1977.
* 1892: First publication of ''The Question Mark'', a literary magazine, one of the earliest of its type in an American girls school.
* 1893: Spring term, first Shakespeare play performed. Rosemary Hall hosts Mrs. Hazen's School of Pelham Manor, N.Y., in what is regarded as the first interscholastic sports event between girls schools in American history.
* 1894: First interscholastic basketball game played against New Haven Normal School.
* 1895: In May, first Sixth Form Walk, about in three days, the route being Wallingford, Durham, Middletown, Southington, Wallingford.
* 1896: Foundation of the Choate School by William Gardner Choate and Mary Atwater Choate; from 1896 to 1908 all annual deficits are paid by Judge Choate. Mark Pitman begins his nine-year tenure. 6 boys enroll. At Rosemary Hall, Frederick Hulseberg is hired to coach the cricket team, thereby becoming the first girls cricket coach in America.
* 1897: At the Choate School, the Choate House is constructed. Dramatic Club mounts its first play in the Choate House library. Good Government Club begins, the precursor of student council.
* 1897: At Rosemary Hall, first election of The Committee, the student self-governance body; it lasted until 1971.
* 1898: At Rosemary, sixth formers are required to pass the Bryn Mawr College entrance exam in order to graduate; the requirement lasted 39 years.
* 1899: At Choate, enrollment is 20 boys. Dining room "French Table" begins. May 13, first interscholastic baseball game played against Wallingford High School. December 9, first interscholastic basketball game played against Wallingford High.
* 1900: At Choate in March, basketball game against Stearns School played at Company K Armory, with Rosemary Hall girls forming a cheering section. Debates held between two secret societies, the Owls (standing for wisdom) and Helvetians (fidelity and honor). Spring term, first publication of ''The Brief'', the yearbook. Fall term, first interscholastic football season, record of 2–1.
* 1900: Rosemary Hall relocates to Greenwich with 57 girls.
* 1901: Gymnasium built for $15,000, the gift of Julius Meyerowitz. The Lodge (now Sally Hart Lodge) and Bungalow bought. "Ice polo", the precursor of hockey, plays four-game season.
* 1902: 40 boys. Atwater House, formerly occupied by Rosemary Hall, becomes the main building. The Cabin, a "science museum" and workshop, is donated by Judge Choate. Boys install wiring in Choate House for room-to-room telephoning. First "Big Dance", eventually to become Festivities.
* 1904: Library space is added to Atwater House. Charles Vezin Jr, future pole-vault world record-holder, is on the track team.
* 1905: December 3, headmaster Mark Pitman dies.
* 1907: Publication of ''The Choate Chronicle'', a newspaper adjunct to ''The Brief''; it was precursor to ''The Choate News''.
* 1908: Fall term, George St. John begins 39 years as headmaster; he lives in Curtis House (now Sally Hart Lodge), which will remain the official headmaster's residence until 1997. 35 boys, 5 masters. The school occupies . Choate Orchestra begins. ''The Choate Chronicle'' is renamed ''The Choate News''.

* 1909: First Seal Prize awarded to outstanding sixth former (senior); since 1982 also awarded to sixth form girl.
* 1911: May 12, St. John "buys" the school for $23,000 cash and $38,000 in stock. May 30, dedication of Hill House; it cost $40,000, mainly the gift of St. John's Harvard friend Arthur Hoe. John Dos Passos graduates. Fall term, 103 boys, 13 masters.
* 1912: 124 boys, 16 masters. The glee club begins.
* 1913: St. Andrew's Society founded; it operates a camp for underprivileged boys from New York, staffed by Choate boys; it lasted until 1965. Boathouse on Community Lake and two shells are given by Nathaniel W. Bishop.
* 1914: February 4, first meal served in newly completed West Wing dining hall. Fall term, 131 boys, 17 masters.
* 1915: 142 boys enroll. First publication of ''The Choate Literary Magazine''. Crew begins; tennis club begins.
* 1916: March 16, Meyerowitz Gymnasium destroyed by fire. Golf club begins. Fall term, 177 boys, 23 masters. The Gables is bought.
* 1917: Spring term, the new Gymnasium (now Student Activities Center) is completed. Orchard House and Further Cottage are bought. Fall term, 200 boys, 25 masters.
* 1918: Battalion Companies A, B, C, D organized. Adlai Stevenson graduates.
* 1919: Chester Bowles graduates. Darling House bought. Fall term, 237 boys, 28 masters.
* 1920: The Parsonage, East Cottage, and Ayres, Church, and Long Houses are bought; East Cottage will be John F. Kennedy's fourth form residence. Fall term, 253 boys, 32 masters. The choir begins.
* 1921: 271 boys, 34 masters. Fall term, Memorial House is completed; there were 280 donors, including Andrew Mellon P'25, who gave $15,000. "Admiral" Austin Meeks '16 arrives to coach crew to regional dominance in the 1920s and 1930s; by 1933 Choate rows eight shells.
* 1922: 299 boys, 38 masters. First Deerfield Day; Choate football wins 28–6.
* 1923: 322 boys, 40 masters. Brown-Massie House bought.
* 1924: 339 boys, 43 masters. Creation of "The Choate School Chapel Foundation"; it attracts 624 donors. Completion of the Chapel; designed by Ralph Adams Cram and constructed by Choate staff; Andrew Mellon's donation was $25,000. Choate Farm is bought and the school dairy built.
* 1925: Paul Mellon graduates. Woodhouse is bought. 361 boys, 45 masters.
* 1926: Spring term, Andrew Mellon Library is completed; Mellon gave $150,000 of its $200,000 cost. Fall term, 401 boys, 50 masters.
* 1927: 426 boys, 57 masters. The Deaconage bought.
* 1928: 452 boys, 57 masters. John Ed Wilfong starts the nursery. Completion of John D. Archbold Infirmary.
* 1929: Robert Fitzgerald graduates. Fall term, 497 boys, 62 masters. The Hall is built. Foundation name changed to "The Choate School Chapel and Library Foundation"; it owns the Chapel, Library, Memorial House, Archbold, and the Hall.
* 1930: Alan Lomax graduates. Mahlon Thatcher Track and Fields built, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Mahlon Thatcher in memory of their son Mahlon Jr, a fourth former who had died in a riding accident. Fall term, 509 boys, 64 masters. Soccer team begins. First appearance of the band at a football game.
* 1931: 505 boys, 64 masters. Munson House bought. Baseball begins a six-season record of 57–6.
* 1932: January, Joseph P. Kennedy P'35 arranges the first showing of a movie. Winter Exercise Building (now Johnson Athletic Center) is built entirely by Choate staff and cost $275,000, one-third of which was given by Mr. and Mrs. Mahlon Thatcher; the Winter Ex was the final project of building supervisor Henry Raymond Stone, who died in 1931. The Headmaster, an insatiable Savoyard, commands the first of yearly Gilbert and Sullivan productions (''The Mikado'') that continue to his retirement year 1947 ('' Patience'').
* 1933: 475 boys, 59 masters. Homestead and Red Cottage bought, Homestead from Hunt Atwater '03, nephew of Mary Atwater Choate.
* 1934: 459 boys, 58 masters. Edsall House bought.
* 1935: John F. Kennedy graduates. 466 boys, 57 masters. 1690 House bought. January 12–13, Gertrude Stein visits campus and her lecture is published in ''The Choate Literary Magazine''.
* 1936: Alan Jay Lerner and Avery Dulles graduate. Fall term, 490 boys, 62 masters. Chapel House and New Old South are bought, the gift of Clinton P. Knight, Jr. Dudley Fitts and his former student Robert Fitzgerald '29 publish translations of ''Alcestis of Euripides'' (1936) and ''Antigone of Sophocles'' (1939).
* 1937: 501 boys, 64 masters. Alumni Boathouse built; 400 donors. The Choate School, Incorporated, transfers its property to the Foundation. Combination House is created from the joining of the relocated Brown and Middle cottages.

* 1938: Paul Mellon Science Hall (now Mellon Humanities Center) is built, the gift of Paul Mellon '25. Red House (now Squire Stanley) bought from the Atwater family. "The Golden Blues" swing band begins and will last 30 years.
* 1939: April, first issue of ''The Choate Alumni Bulletin'' is published; Dan D. Coyle '34 is editor.
* 1940: Fathers Association begins.
* 1941: Mothers Association begins.
* 1943: Alumni Fund council begins. March, Boston Braves move into campus residence to use the Winter Ex for spring training; they return in March 1944.
* 1944: Fiftieth Anniversary Campaign for endowment begins.
* 1945: The Maiyeros ''a cappella'' group begun by music master Duncan Phyfe '38.
* 1946: Edward Albee graduates; his first published play, ''Schism'', appears in the Commencement issue of ''The Choate Literary Magazine''. Dedication of Wilken Field in memory of Ray Theodore "Ted" Wilken '40. September 27–29, celebration of Choate's Fiftieth Anniversary, among the speakers were John F. Kennedy '35, the presidents of Yale (St. John's brother-in-law), Princeton, and Williams, and the heads of Andover, Deerfield, Groton, St. Paul's, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Taft, Loomis, Westminster, and Milton.
* 1947: 533 boys. Trustees elect Seymour St. John '31 headmaster; he is installed June 11 and begins his 26-year tenure. Richard R. Higgins succeeds George St. John as president of the Foundation. Logan Munroe House is built, the gift of Charles A. Munroe P'33 in memory of his son.
* 1948: 550 boys. Nichols House is built, the gift of Charles Walter Nichols, Jr. '29, and named in memory of his father, trustee 1947–57.
* 1950: First Project Day, brought on by a storm that downed trees; now called Community Day.
* 1952: Adlai Stevenson '18 is the Democratic Presidential nominee, and again in 1956.
* 1953: December 5, dedication of the outdoor Courtenay Hemenway Rink.
* 1957: Wheeler House is bought; named for Frank Wheeler, teacher and director of studies 1916–52. Fall term, Johannes van Straalen begins teaching Russian a month before the launch of Sputnik 1. October, dedication of George and Clara St. John Hall; it cost $562,000.
* 1959: ''Forty Years at School'' by headmaster emeritus George St. John is published by Henry Holt and Company.

* 1960: April 17, the History Club is addressed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph Bunche, whose son Ralph Jr. '61 is the school's first African-American student. Pitman, Atwater, and Mead houses are built, the latter named for George Jackson Mead, class of 1911, trustee 1947–57. In November, John Kennedy '35 is elected President; in a straw poll only 18 percent of students vote for him.
* 1961: January 20, Kennedy takes office; his inaugural address "Ask not" phrase is sometimes said to derive from George St. John's "Ask not what your school can do for you; ask what you can do for your school."
* 1962: May 5, dedication of new wing of Library, with Robert Frost reading his Kennedy inaugural poem, "The Gift Outright." Spencer House (originally '62 House) is built; in 1982 it will be renamed in memory of James Spencer, chemistry and physics teacher 1962–82.
* 1963: Michael Douglas graduates. Quantrell House is built; named in memory of Ernest E. Quantrell P'42, trustee 1942–61.
* 1964: In the summer, Alberto "Tico" Carrero '66 wins the U.S. under-16 tennis championship; his varsity record in three years is 36–0.
* 1965: John Dos Passos '11 attends 50th anniversary celebration of ''The Lit''. Fall term, sixth formers in the history class of Jack McCune (future headmaster of St. Alban's) are the guests of Secretary of State Dean Rusk in his office; they challenge him on the Vietnam War. McCook House is completed, named for Anson T. McCook, trustee 1911–62; the dormitory and its twin, Clinton Knight House, were designed by architect Frank Winder '39.
* 1966: January, headmaster emeritus George St. John dies, aged 88. Spring term, Ralph Metcalfe, Jr. '66, son of the Olympic gold-medalist and Illinois Congressman, is the top high school hammer thrower in the country. Clinton Knight House is completed, named for Clinton P. Knight Jr. '12, trustee 1938–56. Fall term, Paul Mellon '25 offers $1.5 million to build a facility for theater, music, and visual arts; his vision would be realized for $5 million in 1972.
* 1967: Winter term, dedication of Remsen Arena, the gift of the family of William C. S. Remsen '39. Varsity hockey is 17–0. Steele Hall is built, named for George Steele. The Chapel is enlarged by extension to the south. The Hall is enlarged by widening to the south. Baseball, coached by Tom Yankus '52, begins an eight-season league record of 54–2. Afro-American Union is formed. Fall term, in Greenwich, Connecticut, Rosemary Hall (RH) headmistress Alice McBee urges trustees of that school to consider "official affiliation" with a boys school, in light of declining enrollment and financial difficulty.

* 1968: In January, Duke Ellington Orchestra plays in the Chapel. January 8, headmaster St. John hosts a private meeting in Wallingford with RH Board chair Charles Stetson, and the feasibility of relocating RH is discussed. January 26, Choate trustees vote to allow continuing discussions with RH. June, the CS and RH boards make a formal agreement, with the understanding that RH would relocate. September 24, St. John and McBee hold a press conference in St. John Hall and issue a press release dated September 26 which states that "a brand new school would be built for Rosemary Hall on Choate Land, and the combined institutions would provide 'coordinate' secondary education starting in September 1971."
* 1969: Spring term, in response to student unrest St. John appoints English master Malcolm Manson '57 to run "Metanoia", a six-week lecture program that replaces Thursday classes; Margaret Mead and Alvin Toffler are the first two speakers. First African-American master, Charles O. Todman Jr., is appointed to teach history and start the Afro-American Studies Center. Dress code no longer requires jacket and tie in the classroom. In November St. John allows about 50 students to attend the peace march in Washington, D.C.
* 1969: January, architect James Polshek is selected to design the Wallingford RH campus; his budget will eventually be $6.4 million. On Prize Day, Seymour St. John is the graduation speaker in Greenwich.
* 1970: Spring term, 20 RH sixth formers have an advance guard residence on the CS campus; they live in Nichols House; Meg Colgate '70 is made interim editor of ''The Choate News''. The book ''A World of Our Own'' by Peter Prescott '53, son of Orville Prescott of the ''New York Times'', examines the political turmoil in the school year 1967–68. Fall term, chapel attendance is no longer compulsory. Zurn Organ is installed in the Chapel, given in memory of John Henry Zurn '43.
* 1971: 568 boys. Elizabeth Winslow Loomis begins two years as RH headmistress; she had been head of upper school at The Lenox School (now Birch Wathen Lenox School) in Manhattan and a former RH teacher and dean. June 3, the last Prize Day in Greenwich, Choate head Seymour St. John is the graduation speaker. The Greenwich campus is bought by Daycroft School, which moves from its own Greenwich campus on Rock Ridge Road. August, the last two Wallingford campus buildings, Bronfman Library and Macquire Gymnasium, are completed. The school and 223 girls relocate.
* 1972: May 12–14, dedication of Paul Mellon Arts Center ("PMAC"), the gift entire of Paul Mellon '25; it cost more than $5 million; three-day celebration includes May 12 dedication speech by Edward Albee '46, a production of his ''Zoo Story'', performances by the Boston Pops and Victor Borge, and official May 13 dedication of the RH campus. Fall term, all-school sit-down meals end. Fall term, an early and groundbreaking experiment in independent study begins in Room 501 of the PMAC, with approval of Seymour St. John at the urging of Philip Ventre, as a group of rock musicians composes and performs originals to student audiences as far north as Hebron Academy in Maine.

* 1973: Spring term, RH yearbook ''The Answer Book'' is merged into ''The Brief''. July 1, Seymour St. John resigns as headmaster. Wallingford Symphony Orchestra is formed by Philip Ventre, with the PMAC as its home. Lewis House is bought, named for Robert E. Lewis, teacher 1917–47. Fall term, CS and RH adopt uniform grading system. October 4, Charles F. Dey is installed as first "president and principal of The Choate School and Rosemary Hall." Dey was formerly an associate dean at Dartmouth and had taught history at Andover. He appoints RH academic dean and classics teacher Joanne Sullivan as dean and head of RH, and former St. Paul's School teacher Richard Aiken as dean and head of CS.
* 1974: June, the two boards of trustees are merged, with Elizabeth Hyde Brownell '21 as chair. RH newspaper ''The Wild Boar'' is merged into ''The Choate News''. The students Creative Arts Committee is formed; an arts credit is added to graduation requirements.
* 1976: Jamie Lee Curtis graduates. February 18, fire damages the north section of the Winter Ex. December 1, rebuilt Winter Ex opens and is named for Worthington Johnson '32, who led fundraising that would secure $4 million in two years. Winter term, squash and riflery become coed sports.
* 1977: May, first joint Prize Day. Fall term, first joint registration, orientation, and Convocation. CS Student Council and RH Committee unofficially merge. Football, coached by Doug James, begins a five-season record of 32–7–1. Bobette Reed is first African-American admissions officer. Adlai E. Stevenson '18 Lecture Series is inaugurated by Allard Lowenstein

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases