Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall
Fidelitas et Integritas
Fidelity and Integrity
Location
Wallingford, Connecticut, 06492
USA
Information
School type Private, Boarding
Religious affiliation(s) None
Founded 1890
Founder Mary Atwater Choate, William Gardner Choate
Head of school Dr. Alex Curtis
Faculty 122
Gender Coeducational
Enrollment 850
Student to teacher ratio 6:1
Campus Suburban, 458 acres
121 buildings
Color(s) Choate Blue and Gold, and Rosemary Blue
Athletics conference Eight Schools Association
Mascot Wild Boar
Rival Deerfield Academy
Newspaper The News
Yearbook The Brief
Endowment $283 million
Website Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall (also known as Choate) is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut. It took its present name and coeducational form with the merger in 1971 of two single-sex establishments, The Choate School (founded in 1896 in Wallingford) and Rosemary Hall (founded in 1890 in Wallingford, but resident from 1900 to 1971 in Greenwich, Connecticut). At the merger, the Wallingford campus was enlarged with a complex of modernist buildings on its eastern edge to accommodate the girls from Greenwich.

Choate is a member of the Eight Schools Association, begun informally in 1973–74 and formalized in 2006, when former Choate headmaster Edward Shanahan was appointed its first president. The member schools are Choate, Phillips Academy (known as Andover), Phillips Exeter Academy (known as Exeter), Deerfield Academy, St. Paul's School, Hotchkiss School, Lawrenceville School, and Northfield Mount Hermon.[1]

Choate is also a member of the Ten Schools Admissions Organization, established in 1966 and comprising Choate, Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, St. Paul's, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Taft School, Loomis Chaffee, and The Hill School.

Among Choate's alumni are President John F. Kennedy, two-time Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Dos Passos, philanthropist Paul Mellon, and actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Paul Giamatti.

Contents

Curriculum

Choate's curriculum includes an array of elective and interdisciplinary courses, from astronomy and architecture to printmaking and post-modernism to a dozen foreign and ancient languages.[2] Area specializations include the Arts Concentration Program and a two-year intensive Science Research Program with summer laboratory work at universities in the United States and abroad.

The Capstone Program allows talented students to explore an area of the curriculum in depth. Working independently under advisory of a faculty member, students spend a year researching an area of interest and produce a substantial work as the culminating effort of the year of study.

The performing and visual arts programs are supported by the resources of the Paul Mellon Arts Center. The senior year Capstone Project focuses on a single academic area, and the Senior Project Program provides on- or off-campus internships in academic research, visual art, and the performing arts. Other specialized programs include American Studies, creative writing, economics, FBLA, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, religion, debate, and the Fed Challenge. One-third of Choate students participate in study-abroad programs in China, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

The Kohler Environmental Center, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, will open in 2012 on a 268-acre site in the northeast quadrant of the campus. It has been described as "the first teaching, research and residential environmental center in U.S. secondary education."[3] It will house up to 20 students and two faculty members and will support an environmentally focused interdisciplinary academic program.

There are about 240 courses in the curriculum, which has requirements in community service and in contemporary global studies. All disciplines have honors courses. There is Advanced Placement (AP) preparation in 25 areas, and 80 percent of students score a 4 or 5 on the AP.

Choate regularly produces semifinalists and finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search and in the Siemens Competition in science. In economics Choate's Fed Challenge team was the 2009 national champion and has won the New England District Championship in 12 of the past 13 years. Choate's Economic Challenge team has also won a national championship and has been state champion in 9 of the past 10 years. In 2010, its inaugural year, the Reserve Cup Challenge team won the Connecticut state championship and placed second in the New England championship.

The school's chamber orchestra performed at the White House in December 2009 and made concert tours of Europe in 2010 and 2011. The festival and chamber choruses performed at St. Patrick's Day mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in 2011.[4] The Maiyeros, an a cappella group, performed at Westminster Abbey in 2008. In recent years Choate orchestras and choral groups have also toured China and performed at Lincoln Center in New York. The school's student-operated radio station, WWEB, is FCC-licensed and has been broadcasting since 1969.

Statistical profile

Choate enrolls 630 boarding and 220 day students representing 39 states and 46 countries. 31 percent of students identify themselves as persons of color. For the 2011–2012 year there were 1,987 applicants for about 265 places. The 2011–2012 tuition and fees are $46,420 for boarders and $35,350 for day students. Financial aid totaling $10 million was awarded to 34 percent of the student body, the average award being $35,500 for boarders and $23,800 for day students.[5]

The teaching faculty numbers 122 of whom 67 percent hold advanced degrees. Ninety percent of teaching faculty live on campus. There are in addition 49 administrative faculty. The student-faculty ratio is 6:1, and the average class size is 12.

On July 1, 2011, Dr. Alex Curtis succeeded Edward Shanahan as headmaster of Choate. Shanahan had served as head for twenty years from 1991, when he arrived from Dartmouth College. Curtis was selected by unanimous vote of the Choate board on November 4, 2010. Before Choate, Curtis was headmaster of Morristown-Beard School for seven years. He grew up in England, was educated at St. Paul's School in London, at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and at Princeton, where his doctorate was in art and archaeology. While at Princeton, Curtis was head coach of women's rugby.

Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim chaplains serve Choate's campus ministry. Services include Christian fellowship, Protestant evening services, Roman Catholic mass, Buddhist meditation, Hillel, Spiritual Alternatives, Reflections Program, and other student worship groups.[5]

In June 2011 Choate's endowment was $283 million. In November 2006 the school inaugurated a capital campaign with a target of $200 million and by April 2011 gifts and pledges of $215 million had been secured.[6]

The school fields 81 interscholastic athletic teams in 32 sports. Choate's historical archrival in athletic competition is Deerfield Academy. The final weekend of the fall season is Deerfield Day (at Deerfield it's called called Choate Day), when the two schools compete in every sport at varsity and sub-varsity levels.

Buildings and facilities

The 458-acre (1.85 km2) campus contains 121 buildings in a variety of architectural styles. Georgian Revival predominates (examples by famed traditionalist architect Ralph Adams Cram and by Polhemus & Coffin), but there are also eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses and dramatic modernist structures (examples by I.M. Pei and by James Polshek). All dormitory rooms have Internet2 high-speed access, and there is wireless access in all academic buildings, the Student Activities Center, and Johnson Athletic Center. Choate Information Place (CHIP) is the electronic information resource for the campus.

Principal buildings are in Georgian red brick, often with classical porticoes that were, by design, the unifying architectural feature of the early building phase.[7] Of this type are, in chronological order:

The I.M. Pei-designed buildings on campus are:

Other large-scale buildings and athletic facilities include:

Athletics

Choate competes in sports against schools from all over New England and adjacent states. Teams are fielded at the levels of varsity, junior varsity, and thirds sections. There are 32 different sports in interscholastic competition.[11] Intramural programs include aerobics, dance, senior weight training, yoga, winter running, rock climbing, fitness and conditioning, and senior volleyball.

From 2007 to 2011 Choate has won New England championships in boys and girls ice hockey, boys golf, boys crew, and in girls swimming, volleyball, and water polo. In that same period, Choate has won Founders League championships in boys and girls squash, in boys cross country, golf, softball, and tennis, and in girls volleyball.[12]

The athletic directors of Choate and the other members of the Eight Schools Association compose the Eight Schools Athletic Council, which organizes sports events and tournaments among ESA schools.[13] Choate is also a member of the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) and the Founders League, which comprises private schools located mainly in Connecticut.

Interscholastic sports

Fall

Winter

Spring

Traditions

Choate Rosemary Hall is rich in traditional events:

Publications

Heads of School and Foundation

History

Early years

See also: Rosemary Hall for its history before the 1971 merger with Choate.

The schools that would eventually become Choate Rosemary Hall were begun by members of two prominent New England families, the Choates and Atwaters.[17]

Rosemary Hall was founded in 1890 by Mary Atwater Choate at Rosemary Farm in Wallingford, her girlhood home and the summer residence of Mary 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, prototype of many such exchanges across the country (it survived until 2003).[18] 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.[19]

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), at the northwest corner of Christian and Elm streets, where new Atwater House now stands. They also had the use of "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 "Ar-Treece"), 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.[20] 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.[21] Like his younger, more famous brother, he was a prominent clubman (Harvard and The Century). That brother was Joseph Hodges Choate, lawyer, 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 sixty-six years old, a widower, and had been principal of Woolsey School in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1872.[22] He accepted the Choates' offer, not least perhaps because it would provide employment for 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, and Red House (Squire Stanley House) has remained a first-year dormitory to the present day.

Pitman taught Latin, English, history, and science; Elizabeth taught art, Helen piano, and Leila was writing teacher and school nurse. Mary Choate's physician brother, Dr. Huntington Atwater, taught crafts and was 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 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 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.[23] 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 5 acres (20,000 m2) 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 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 had 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, 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 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."[24] 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."[25]

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.[26]

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, Frank Boyden of Deerfield, Horace Dutton Taft of Taft, Frederick Sill of Kent, Samuel Drury of St. Paul's, Alfred Stearns of Andover, Lewis Perry of Exeter, and George Van Santvoord of Hotchkiss.[27]

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 at Episcopal Theological Seminary (now 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."[28]

Timeline

Notable alumni

In popular culture

Choate occurs frequently in novels, only the best known instance being listed here, as the first item:

References

  1. ^ Taylor Smith, "History of the Association," The Phillipian (Phillips Academy), February 14, 2008
  2. ^ https://www.choate.edu/academics/teachingatchoate.aspx; http://www.choate.edu/academics/pdf/coursecat.pdf
  3. ^ Interview with Dr. Howard R. Ernst, "Ernst Recruits Prospective KEC Participants," The News, Oct. 7, 2011; http://www.choate.edu/aboutchoate/kohler_environmental_center.aspx
  4. ^ Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Summer 2010, p. 6, and Summer 2011, p. 6
  5. ^ a b http://www.choate.edu/aboutchoate/quickfacts.aspx
  6. ^ a b http://www.choate.edu/news/detail.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=4138&ModuleID=111&NEWSPID=1
  7. ^ George St. John, Forty Years at School (New York, 1959), pp 101-31
  8. ^ http://www.choate.edu/academics/library_info_collections.aspx
  9. ^ http://www.choate.edu/aboutchoate/mapsdir_buildingpages.aspx; William Mercer and Benjamin F. Sylvester, Choate Rosemary Hall: A Portrait of the School (Arlington, Mass., 1993)
  10. ^ http://www.choate.edu/athletics/thefacilities.aspx
  11. ^ http://www.choate.edu/athletics/teamsandschedules.aspx
  12. ^ Spencer Stuart, op cit, p. 4; Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Summer 2010, p. 56
  13. ^ http://www.nedgallagher.com/journal/archives/003158.html, dated May 2, 2010; http://www.nedgallagher.com/journal/archives/002489.html, dated May 3, 2009; http://www.nedgallagher.com/journal/archives/000968.html, dated April 11, 2007
  14. ^ H.L. Mencken, The American Language, 4th ed., abridged by Raven McDavid (New York, 1963), p. 522
  15. ^ "Incendium: Senior Stress a Fading Memory," The News, April 15, 2011
  16. ^ http://www.choate.edu/aboutchoate/publications.aspx
  17. ^ Ephraim Orcutt Jameson, The Choates in America, 1643–1896 (Ipswich, Mass., 1896); Charles Henry Stanley Davis, History of Walligford, Conn. (Meriden, Conn., 1870)
  18. ^ "A Genteel Nostalgia, Going Out of Business," The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2003, p. 137
  19. ^ Tom Generous, Choate Rosemary Hall: A History of the School (Wallingford, Conn., 1997), p. 3. Much of the matter in this section is taken from Generous.
  20. ^ "Rosemary's 50th," Time, Nov. 4, 1940, p. 137
  21. ^ "Memorial of William Gardner Choate," New York County Lawyers' Association Yearbook 1921 (New York, 1921), pp. 199-200
  22. ^ Obituary Record of the Graduates of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine for the Decade Ending 1 June 1909 (Brunswick, Maine, 1911), pp. 350-1
  23. ^ Generous, op cit, p. 17
  24. ^ St. John, op cit, p. 11
  25. ^ Generous, op cit, p. 66
  26. ^ The Choate News, October 13, 1928, reproduced in Generous, op cit, p. 90
  27. ^ James McLachlan, American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study (New York, 1970), passim; Christopher F. Armstrong, "On the Making of Good Men: Character-Building in the New England Boarding Schools," in The High-Status Track: Studies of Elite Schools and Stratification, ed. P.W. Kingston and L.S. Lewis (Albany, N.Y., 1990), pp. 9-10
  28. ^ "Seymour St. John, 94, Leader of Choate School for 26 Years, Dies," New York Times, April 20, 2006
  29. ^ The name Julius is from Generous, op cit, p. 29; it is Victor in St. John, op cit, p. 297
  30. ^ Much of the detail for Choate 1908–1947 comes from "Chronological Sequence," St. John, op cit, pp. 297-303
  31. ^ 280 donors is from Generous, op cit, p. 70; 435 donors according to St. John, op cit, p. 299
  32. ^ "Alan Lomax, Who Raised Voice of Folk Music in U.S., Dies at 87," The New York Times, July 20, 2002
  33. ^ Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. W.W. Briggs, Jr. (Westport, Conn., 1994), pp. 182-3
  34. ^ Mel Gussow, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey: A Biography (New York, 1999), pp. 60-1
  35. ^ George St. John, Forty Years at School (New York, 1959)
  36. ^ Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words (Chicago, 2008), p. 359
  37. ^ Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Fall 2007, p. 28
  38. ^ Generous, op cit, p. 177
  39. ^ Peter S. Prescott, A World of Our Own: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys' Preparatory School (New York, 1970)
  40. ^ Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Summer 2007, page 26
  41. ^ Tom Generous and Charles T. Wilson, Choate Rosemary Hall: A History of the School (Walligford, 1997)
  42. ^ The Lawrence (Lawrenceville School), January 19, 2007, p. 1
  43. ^ "Rove Passes Up Commencement Speech at Choate After the Students Object," The New York Times, Jan. 29, 2008
  44. ^ The Record-Journal (Meridan, Conn.), July 21 and October 17, 2009; Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., "To the Members of the Choate Rosemary Hall Community," letter dated February 1, 2010
  45. ^ Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Summer 2010, p. 26
  46. ^ The News, Feb. 5, 2010
  47. ^ Edward Shanahan, "State of the School," Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Spring 2010, p. 10
  48. ^ "Annual ESA Meeting Held at Choate," The News, April 29, 2011
  49. ^ http://www.choate.edu/aboutchoate/headsearch.aspx
  50. ^ http://www.choate.edu/news/detail.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublicArchive&LinkID=571&ModuleID=111&NEWSPID=3

External links