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Choate Rosemary Hall "Fidelitas et Integritas"
| Headmaster | Edward J. Shanahan |
|---|---|
| Established | 1890 |
| School type | Private, Boarding |
| Religious affiliation | None |
| Location | Wallingford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Enrollment | 850 |
| Faculty | 120 |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Mascot | Wild Boar |
| Colors | Blue, Gold |
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 eminent single-sex establishments, The Choate School (founded in 1896 in Wallingford) and Rosemary Hall (founded in 1890 in Wallingford, but resident after 1900 in Greenwich, Connecticut). At the merger, the Wallingford campus was enlarged with a complex of modernist buildings on its eastern edge to accommodate the women from Greenwich.
Choate is a member of a group of leading American secondary schools, the Ten Schools Admission Organization (TSAO), established in 1956 and comprising Choate, Phillips Academy (known as Andover), Phillips Exeter Academy (known as Exeter), Deerfield Academy, St. Paul's School, Hotchkiss School, Lawrenceville School, 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, librettist Alan Jay Lerner, actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Paul Giamatti, and Jamie Lee Curtis, poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald, computer science guru Nicholas Negroponte, and Roman Catholic educator Cardinal Avery Dulles.
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Choate is noted among American secondary schools for the breadth of its curriculum and for its curricular innovation. Choate offers an array of elective and interdisciplinary courses, from astronomy to architecture to a dozen foreign languages. There are specialized concentration programs in the arts and in science research. The Capstone Project during a student's senior year focuses on a single academic area (such as Creative Writing), and the school has a performing arts program based at the Paul Mellon Arts Center.
In June 2007 the school's endowment was $267 million. In November 2006 Choate inaugurated a capital campaign with a target of $200 million and by late 2009 more than $160 million had been secured. [1]
The school fields eighty-one interscholastic athletic teams in thirty-two 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.
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Facilities and buildings
The 450-acre (1.8 km2) campus of about 120 buildings encompasses a blend of architectural styles with Georgian Revival predominating (examples by famed traditionalist architect Ralph Adams Cram), but there are also seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses and dramatic modernist structures (examples by I.M. Pei).
Principal buildings are in Georgian red brick, often with imposing classical porticoes. Of this type are Hill House (for many years the administration building, with a cavernous dining hall); Archbold House (designed by Ralph Adams Cram, now the admissions office, but formerly the largest school infirmary in the country); Paul Mellon Humanities Center; Steele Hall (languages); Andrew Mellon Library (given by Choate parent and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon); three west campus dormitories composing an ensemble, Memorial House, Nichols House, and Logan Munroe House; St. John Hall (mathematics); St. John Chapel (designed by Ralph Adams Cram); Worthington-Johnson Athletic Center; and John Joseph Activities Center.
The I.M. Pei buildings on campus are the Carl C. Icahn Center for Science (formerly the Paul Mellon Science Center) and the Paul Mellon Arts Center (pictured here). The latter resembles the Pei-designed and Mellon-donated East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
St. John Chapel and St. John Hall were named for father and son headmasters George and Seymour St. John. The St. John "dynasty" at Choate lasted 65 years, from 1908 to 1973. George St. John was one of the generation of legendary, long-serving (and often autocratic) headmasters who shaped the New England prep school. Chief among these were St. John of Choate, 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. [2]
Traditions
Choate Rosemary Hall is rich in traditional events:
- The Last Hurrah is the final formal social event for seniors, known (in British-influenced terminology) as sixth formers. Traditionally sixth formers enjoy a reception, dinner, ballroom dance, and swing dance competition.
- Garden Party, a Rosemary Hall tradition, takes place in the spring. Sixth form girls invite a fifth form (junior class) girl and a faculty member. They exchange flowers, take pictures, and pass on Rosemarian traditions to the rising senior girls. A slideshow is then presented. In response to Garden Party, Choate boys have created a "Parden Garty" and are now included in the slideshow portion of the event.
- The Physics Phlotilla takes place in the spring term. Students gather on the banks of the Science Center Pond to watch a competition among makeshift cardboard boats. The principles of buoyancy are tested, and many craft are sunk. Students must sail their boats the length of the pond and there are prizes for speed and creative design.
Athletics
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Choate competes in many 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 is also a world of intramural participation. Interscholastic sports in the fall term include cross-country, field hockey, crew, football, soccer, volleyball, and boys' water polo. Winter sports include basketball, ice hockey, squash, swimming and diving, and wrestling. Spring sports include archery, baseball, golf, campus golf, crew, lacrosse, softball, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and girls water polo. Intramural sports include aerobics, dance, senior weight training, yoga, winter running, rock climbing, fitness and conditioning, and senior volleyball.
The News
The News, previously known as The Choate News, is the weekly newspaper at Choate Rosemary Hall. Now in its 102nd year, The News is one of the oldest high school newspapers in the country, covering schoolwide, local, and national events.
Notable alumni
- Edward Albee, playwright
- Lauren Ambrose, film and TV actress
- Florieda Batson, hurdler, 1922 Olympian
- Chester Bowles, Governor of Connecticut and undersecretary in the Kennedy Administration
- Arne H. Carlson, former Governor of Minnesota
- Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel (did not graduate)
- Julie Chu, Olympic hockey player
- Glenn Close, five-time Oscar nominated actress
- Jamie Lee Curtis, actress
- Bruce Dern, actor
- Tom Dey, director
- John Dos Passos, novelist
- Michael Douglas, two-time Oscar winning actor
- John T. Downey, spy, prisoner of war, and judge
- Paul Draper, winemaker of Ridge Vineyards
- Andres Duany, architect, urban planner, founder of the New Urbanism movement
- Avery Dulles, educator, philosopher, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
- Walter D. Edmonds, historical novelist
- Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr
- Robert Fitzgerald, poet, critic, and translator
- Bruce Gelb, former president of Clairol, former ambassador to Belgium
- Paul Giamatti, Oscar-nominated actor
- Philip Gourevitch, journalist, editor of The Paris Review
- Judson Hale, editor of Old Farmer's Almanac and Yankee Magazine
- Amanda Hearst, heiress
- Buck Henry, comedian, screenwriter
- Jung-Wook Hong, Korean Congressman
- Kim Insalaco, Olympic hockey player
- Bob Kasten, U.S. Senator
- John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
- Joseph Kennedy Jr., war hero
- Sarah Kernochan, novelist, screenwriter, songwriter, and two-time Oscar-winning director
- Whitman Knapp, federal judge
- Hilary Knight, Women's U.S. National Team hockey player
- Herbert Kohler, president of the Kohler Company
- James Laughlin, poet and founder of New Directions Publishing
- Alan Jay Lerner, librettist of My Fair Lady and Camelot
- Alan Lomax, pioneering ethnomusicologist and folklorist
- Ali MacGraw, actress and haute couture model
- Robert McCallum, Jr., Ambassador to Australia
- Paul Mellon, philanthropist, art collector
- Tift Merritt, singer/songwriter
- Emil Mosbacher, yachtsman, two-time winner of the America's Cup, State Department chief of protocol
- Robert Mosbacher, former Secretary of Commerce
- Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab
- Bruce Nelson, History Professor, Dartmouth College
- Douglass North, Nobel Laureate in Economics
- Victoria Nuland, permanent U.S. Representative to NATO
- Tony Powell, radio talk show host
- Angela Ruggiero, Olympic hockey player
- Martha Schwendener, lead singer/songwriter of Bowery Electric
- Bill Simmons, sportswriter
- Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winner, The New York Times editor, Emmy-winning PBS producer
- Roger L. Stevens, theatrical producer, founding chairman of the Kennedy Center and of the National Endowment for the Arts
- Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, UN Ambassador, two-time Democratic presidential candidate
- James Surowiecki, author, New Yorker staff writer
- Ivanka Trump, fashion model and businesswoman
- Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuk, Prince of Bhutan
- Frank "Muddy" Waters, American college football coach
Fictional alumni
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- In the novel Catcher in the Rye the character Al Pike (who shows off at the swimming pool) went to Choate.
- In the TV show M*A*S*H* the character Charles Emerson Winchester went to Choate (and Harvard University and Harvard Medical School).
- In the TV show The West Wing the character Clifford Calley went to Choate (and Brown University and Harvard Law School).
- In Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People, the narrator in the Breakfast at The Kennedy's story went to Choate where he was roommate of John F. Kennedy.
- In the TV show Family Guy (episode Road to Rupert) a man is lured into a bet by the prize of the dog Brian, who will lick peanut butter from "anywhere on your body ... anywhere." The man accepts the bet, saying, "I did go to Choate." (The show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, is an alumnus of a rival Connecticut prep school, Kent School).
- In the TV show Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law one of Harvey's rival lawyers, Evelyn Spyro Throckmorton, went to Choate before getting his law degree at Yale University.
- In the TV show Gilmore Girls the Prep School, "Chilton" is based on Choate.
References
- ^ Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Spring 2008, page 9
- ^ George St. John, "Forty Years at School" (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1959); Peter S. Prescott, "A World of Our Own: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys' Preparatory School" (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970); Tom Generous, "Choate Rosemary Hall: A History of the School" (Wallingford: Choate Rosemary Hall, 1997)
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