Choate Rosemary Hall
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Choate Rosemary Hall
| Headmaster | Edward J. Shanahan |
|---|---|
| Established | 1890 |
| School type | Private |
| Religious affiliation | None |
| Location | Wallingford, Connecticut, USA |
| Enrollment | 850 |
| Faculty | 120 |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Mascot | Wild Boar |
| Colors | Blue, Gold |
Choate Rosemary Hall is a New England preparatory school for students in grades 9-12, known as the third through sixth forms at the school. With both boarding and day students, the storied academy has participated in co-education since the early 1970s. Today, students come from nearly all fifty states and twenty-four countries, with students of color making up 28% of the student body. The admission rate is approximately 17%. Nearly 30% of the student body receives financial aid to pay the tuition: $37,300 for boarding students and $27,350 for day students. The school offers a number of cutting-edge academic programs across the curriculum. Choate Rosemary Hall is located in Wallingford, Connecticut, fifteen miles north of New Haven, Connecticut.
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[edit] History
In 1890 the crossroads of Christian and Elm Streets, now the main arteries through campus, were quiet, unpaved roads. That year, Mary Atwater Choate hired a young scholar from England, Caroline Ruutz-Rees, to be headmistress of a new school for girls. Named Rosemary Hall after the Atwater family farm, the school's main building was the old Atwater house, one of the family's several residences.
Ten years later, Caroline Ruutz-Rees would move Rosemary Hall to Greenwich, where it would develop independently for 71 years and attain a national reputation, with Miss Ruutz-Rees herself teaching Latin, Greek, French literature, history, and “feminism by indirection.”
In the meantime, Mary Atwater Choate and her husband, Judge William G. Choate, had founded a second school in 1896, this time for boys. Mark Pitman was The Choate School's first headmaster.
By 1904, Choate's had grown from four boys to 40. After Mark Pitman's death the following year and the short tenure of an interim headmaster, Judge Choate appointed George St. John as headmaster in 1908. St. John recalls his first impressions of the campus: “There was no way to know [Choate] was a school, except for an athletic field in front. Its wooden houses were separated by private houses.” In sum, “there was little that . . . bespoke a school.”
During his 40 years as headmaster, St. John would change all that. As the school grew to 550 students in 1948, he moved more than a dozen houses around the campus, purchased two dozen more along with hundreds of acres of land, and erected the eight brick Georgian buildings that indeed, in his words, “bespeak a school.”
In 1947, Seymour St. John ’31 succeeded his father, leading the school for 26 years. He focused on broadening and deepening the curriculum, and solidified Choate’s national reputation. His efforts led to additions to the Andrew Mellon Library, the Chapel, and three existing dormitories; and the construction of seven new dormitories. An administration building and the classroom building named for his parents were also added.
Seymour St. John’s tenure culminated in a period of rapid expansion that began with the construction of the modern buildings that would house Rosemary Hall upon its return to Wallingford in 1971. The experiment in co-education was cemented when, in 1974, the two schools merged.
[edit] Overview
Choate is part of The Ten Schools Admissions Organization. Member schools include Deerfield Academy, The Lawrenceville School, Loomis Chaffee, The Taft School, The Hotchkiss School, St. Paul's School, The Hill School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Phillips Academy Andover.
Choate offers courses in English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, history, ethics, political science, economics, and a range of electives. In addition, the school offers a concentration program in the arts.
Choate also offers a range of extracurricular activities, including eighty-one interscholastic teams in thirty-two sports (the school has a traditional athletic rivalry with Deerfield Academy), academic clubs, and student-run publications.
The campus encompasses a blend of architectural styles from Colonial homes and Georgian buildings to dramatic modern structures designed by noted architect I.M. Pei. 116 houses, dormitories, and classroom buildings grace the 400 rolling Connecticut acres. As of the fall of 2006, the school's endowment was nearing $300MM.
[edit] Prominent alumni
- Edward Albee, playwright
- Lauren Ambrose, actress
- Chester Bowles, Governor of Connecticut
- Arne H. Carlson, Governor of Minnesota
- Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel
- Julie Chu, Olympic hockey player
- Glenn Close, actress
- Jamie Lee Curtis, actress
- Bruce Dern, actor
- John Dos Passos, writer
- Michael Douglas, actor
- Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr
- Paul Giamatti, actor
- Philip Gourevitch, journalist, editor of The Paris Review
- Amanda Hearst, heiress
- Buck Henry, comedian
- Kim Insalaco, Olympic hockey player
- Bob Kasten, U.S. Senator
- John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
- Whitman Knapp, federal judge
- Herbert Kohler, president of the Kohler Company
- Alan J. Lerner, songwriter
- Alan Lomax, folk musicologist
- Ali MacGraw, actress
- Paul Mellon, philanthropist
- Tift Merritt, singer/songwriter
- Robert Mosbacher, Secretary of Commerce
- Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab
- Angela Ruggiero, Olympic hockey player
- Bill Simmons, sportswriter
- Tom Dey, director
- Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, UN Ambassador
- James Surowiecki, author, New Yorker staff writer
- Ivanka Trump, fashion model and businesswoman
- Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuk, Prince of Bhutan
