Choate School Wallingford, CT 1960’s Catalog Robert Frost & John F. Kennedy for Sale

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Choate School Wallingford, CT 1960’s Catalog Robert Frost & John F. Kennedy For Sale

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Choate School Wallingford, CT 1960’s Catalog Robert Frost & John F. Kennedy:
$125.00

The Choate School Wallingford, CT 1960’s School Catalog

The Choate School

Wallingford, Connecticut

1960’s Catalog

Robert Frost & John F. Kennedy

Robert Frost MY (PHOTOS 1,2,3)

Entire Page on Page 5

John F. Kennedy (MY PHOTO 1 & 4)

1/2 Page on Page 36

Choate Catalog

8.75” x 11.25”

40 Pages

Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1890, it took its present name and began a co-educational system with the 1978 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.

Choate Rosemary Hall

Wallingford, Connecticut 06492

Private, college-preparatory boarding school

Motto

Latin: Fidelitas et Integritas

(Fidelity and Integrity)

Established

1890 (134 years ago)

Founders

Mary Atwater Choate

William Gardner Choate

Head of school Alex Curtis

Teaching staff

121.4 (on an FTE basis)

Grades 9–12

Gender Co-educational

Enrollment 850 (2017–2018)

Student to teacher ratio 7.1

Campus size

458 acres (185 ha)

Campus type

Suburban

Color(s) Choate blue, gold, rosemary blue

Athletics conference

Founders League

Six Schools League

Mascot

Wild boar

Newspaper

The Choate News

Yearbook

The Brief

Endowment

$396 million (2022)

Affiliations

Eight Schools Association

Ten Schools Admissions Organization

The "Homestead" (built in 1774) was the Choate family's summer home in Wallingford. According to the school newspaper, it is rumored to contain a secret passage to aid escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Choate Rosemary Hall was formed in 1978 through the merger of two sister schools founded by Mary and William Choate in the 1890s. The Choates spent their summers in Mary's hometown of Wallingford, Connecticut

Mary, an alumna of Miss Porter's School, was the great-granddaughter of Caleb Atwater (1741–1832), a Connecticut merchant who supplied the American forces during the Revolutionary War.

William Gardner Choate (1830–1921) was a federal judge with the Southern District of New York from 1878 to 1881, before resigning to enter private practice. He was a national authority on railroad, bankruptcy, and corporation law.[8] His brother Joseph Hodges Choate, another noted lawyer, served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Rosemary Hall

Main article: Rosemary Hall (Greenwich, Connecticut)

In 1890, Mary Atwater Choate founded Rosemary Hall at the Atwater House on Rosemary Farm in Wallingford.[10] Although Mary Choate initially envisioned that Rosemary Hall would train girls in the "domestic arts," the school's first headmistress Caroline Ruutz-Rees (1865–1954) adopted the mission of a contemporary boys' school, emphasizing academics and athletics. In 1936, Time reported that Rosemary Hall girls "work[ed] so hard [in the classroom] that when they get to Smith or Vassar it is often with a sigh of relief."

In 1900, Ruutz-Rees moved Rosemary Hall to Greenwich, Connecticut. She acquired a majority stake in the school and established its independence from the Choate family. Following the merger with Choate, the Greenwich campus was transferred to Daycroft School, which closed in 1991.

The Choate School

Squire Stanley House, Choate's first building, is now a girls' dormitory.

In 1896, William and Mary Choate established a boys' school in Wallingford. They hired Mark Pitman (1830–1905), the principal of Woolsey School in New Haven, Connecticut, as its first headmaster.[16] The school began with six boys, with an average age of 10.[citation needed]

There was no formal relationship at the time with Rosemary Hall, but there were coeducational audiences for plays and recitals and Mary Choate hosted dances at the Homestead.[

Choate School: The St. John Years

From 1908 to 1973, control over the Choate School passed from the Choate family to the St. John family. Under the St. Johns, Choate became one of the largest boarding schools in New England.

In 1908, George St. John (h. 1908–47), an Episcopal priest who had previously taught at Hackley School, The Hill School, and Adirondack-Florida School, became headmaster.[citation needed] At the time, Choate was losing money and had only 51 students. With support from shareholders, St. John bought out the Choate family and incorporated the school as a for-profit corporation; the school reorganized as a non-profit in 1938. St. John believed that expanding enrollment would improve the school's financial resources and allow him to offer more amenities to his students. Enrollment jumped from 51 students in 1908 to 230 in 1918, 452 in 1928, and roughly 600 by 1947.

Hill House contains Choate's dining hall.

George St. John built most of the modern-day Choate campus, including Hill House, West Wing, the Gymnasium, Memorial House, the Chapel, the Library, the Winter Exercise Building, and Archbold Infirmary, which was the nation's largest school infirmary.[citation needed] In the decade following the First World War, Choate sent 412 of its 618 graduates to Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, according to a 1928 edition of the school newspaper.

George St. John was succeeded in 1947 by his son Seymour '31 (h. 1947–73). Under Seymour St. John, Choate admitted its first black student in 1959, increased the share of international students to 15% of the student body, lifted the Sunday chapel attendance requirement, and temporarily abolished A-F grades. An ambitious builder, Seymour St. John invested heavily in improving accommodations for students and faculty. He also hired I. M. Pei to build a $6 million arts center (nearly $50 million in 2024 dollars), which opened in 1972.

Seymour St. John's final major achievement was bringing Rosemary Hall back to Wallingford in 1971. To accommodate Rosemary Hall's 230 students, Choate spent an additional $3 million to build what was essentially "a new campus" in Wallingford. The two schools appointed a common president in 1973 and formally merged in 1978.

JFK, the Muckers, and "Ask not"

John Kennedy '35 writes home on school stationery to say his "studies are going pretty hard" and mentioning LeMoyne Billings '35, his roommate and lifelong closest friend

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.[citation needed]

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 friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings, who kept an apartment in the White House during JFK's presidency.

Kennedy graduated from Choate in 1935. In senior class polling for the yearbook (of which he was business manager), he was voted 'Most Likely to Succeed'.

It has been suggested that the oft-remembered quote from Kennedy's inauguration may have originated from a common refrain from Choate headmaster, George St. John's chapel talks: "The youth who loves his alma mater will always ask not 'What can she do for me?' but 'What can I do for her?'"

Modern era

The Carl Icahn Center for Science was opened in 1989

Following Seymour St. John's retirement, the school was hit hard by financial difficulties in the 1970s. It responded by adding even more students, growing from 843 students in 1973 to 926 in 1978 and 1,021 by 1994. The school's finances eventually stabilized. In 1989, Choate opened a second I. M. Pei building, the science center.

Starting in the 1990s, Choate adopted a policy of shrinking the student body, growing its financial resources, and being more selective in admissions. In 1994, the board of trustees agreed to trim the size of the student body to 821. Choate's acceptance rate declined from 60% in 1991 to 23% in 2016. Choate also embarked on a series of large-scale fundraising campaigns, raising over $100 million from 1995 to 2000; $220 million from 2006 to 2011; and at least $294 million from 2023 to present.

In 2008, Karl Rove was invited to deliver the commencement address but withdrew after a majority of seniors voted against the invitation and certain students threatened to walk out. The New York Times reported that the school's student body "ha[s] been known to trend decidedly blue.