Choate Rosemary Hall

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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 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 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, actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Paul Giamatti, and Jamie Lee Curtis, translator of Homer and poet Robert Fitzgerald, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and educator Avery Dulles, and My Fair Lady librettist Alan Jay Lerner.

[edit] Curriculum

Paul Mellon Humanities Center, built 1938, designed by Charles Fuller

Choate is noted among American secondary schools for the breadth of its curriculum and for its curricular innovation. The school offers an array of elective and interdisciplinary courses, from astronomy and architecture to printmaking and post-modernism to a dozen foreign and ancient languages. 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 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, 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.

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 preparation in 25 areas, and more than 80 percent of students score a 4 or 5 on AP exams.

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 10 of the past 12 years. The school's chamber orchestra performed at the White House in December 2009 and the Maiyeros, an a capella group, performed at Westminster Abbey in 2008. In the past two years Choate orchestras and choral groups have toured Europe and 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.

[edit] Statistical profile

Seymour St. John Chapel, built 1924, designed by Ralph Adams Cram

Choate enrolls 630 boarding and 220 day students representing 40 states and 41 countries. 38 percent of students identify themselves as persons of color. For the 2008-2009 year total fees were $43,380 for boarders and $33,030 for day students. Financial aid totaling $8.5 million was awarded to 33 percent of the student body, the average award being $33,570 for boarders and $22,400 for day students. For the 2009-2010 year there were 1,682 applicants for 269 places.

The faculty numbers 109 full-time and 10 part-time instructors, 70 percent of whom hold advanced degrees. There are in addition 48 administrative faculty. The student-faculty ratio is 6:1, and the average class size is 12. Edward J. Shanahan has been headmaster of Choate since 1991, when he arrived from Dartmouth where he had been Dean of the College. Each spring Shanahan teaches a senior elective course on Irish Literature.

Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish chaplains serve Choate's campus ministry. Services include Christian fellowship, Roman Catholic mass, Buddhist meditation, Hillel, the Spiritual Alternatives and Monthly Reflections programs, and other student worship groups.^[1]

There are five college-placement counselors at the school. From 2005 to 2009 the most popular college destinations of Choate graduates were Georgetown with 48 matriculating, 33 at NYU, 32 at Yale, 27 at Boston University, 26 each at Boston College and George Washington, 25 each at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Tufts, 24 each at Harvard and Wesleyan, 23 at Dartmouth, 21 each at Princeton and Penn, 20 at St Andrews University in Scotland, 19 each at Johns Hopkins and Colgate.^[2]

In June 2007 Choate's endowment was $267 million. In November 2006 the school inaugurated a capital campaign with a target of $200 million and by late 2009 more than $160 million had been secured.^[3]

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.

[edit] Buildings and facilities

Georgian ensemble on the west campus: Andrew Mellon Library, George Steele Hall, Paul Mellon Humanities Center, and Memorial House

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 imposing classical porticoes that were, by design, the unifying architectural feature of the early building phase.^[4] Of this type are, in chronological order:

• Hill House: Designed by Francis Waterman, built 1911; administration offices, with dormitory above.
• West Wing and Hall: Built 1914, 1929; adjoining Hill House, a cavernous dining hall, with dormitory above.
• John Joseph Activities Center: Built 1917 as a gymnasium, renovated 1979; now the student union, mail room, tuck shop, and school store, with a connector to the Larry Hart Pool.
• Memorial House: Built 1921; dormitory on the northwest campus, designed to mirror Hill House on the southwest campus.
• Seymour St. John Chapel: Designed by Ralph Adams Cram, built 1924; recently the filming location for commercials of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
• Andrew Mellon Library: Designed by Edward Mellon, built 1925; given by Choate parent and U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon; Library special collections include correspondence and memorabilia of John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, Edward Albee, Caresse Crosby and other alumni, the Haffenreffer Collection of early American documents and autographs, and collections related to Thomas Hardy and other writers.^[5]
• Archbold: Designed by Ralph Adams Cram, built 1928 on the northeast campus to mirror Hill House and Memorial House; formerly the largest school infirmary in the country, it now houses the visitor center and admissions office, with dormitory above.
• Paul Mellon Humanities Center: Designed by Charles Fuller, built 1938; the digital video lab and the departments of English, History, Philosophy, Religion, and Social Sciences.
• Logan Munroe House: Built 1947; dormitory forming an ensemble with Memorial House, Nichols House, and Pitman House, linked by "Mem Circle" on the northwest campus.
• Nichols House: Designed by Polhemus & Coffin, built 1948; dormitory.
• George and Clara St. John Hall: Built 1957; departments of Mathematics and Computer Science.
• Pitman House: Built 1960; dormitory.
• Library new wing: Built 1963; dedication oratory by Robert Frost.
• George Steele Hall: Built 1967; departments of foreign languages.
• Tenney House and South House: Designed by Centerbrook Architects, built 2008; it follows the residential college model, the houses flank a courtyard and have a connector archway.

Paul Mellon Arts Center, designed by I.M. Pei

Carl C. Icahn Center for Science, designed by I.M. Pei

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

• Icahn Center for Science: Built 1989, the gift of Paul Mellon, for whom it was originally named, and renamed in 2001 following a gift from Carl C. Icahn; with 22 classrooms, laboratories, conservatory, and auditorium; departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.
• Paul Mellon Arts Center: Built 1973, the gift of Paul Mellon; it was prototype for the Pei-designed East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which was also a Paul Mellon benefaction; with an 850-seat proscenium theater designed by George Izenour, a black box theater, a recital hall, film studio, exhibition galleries, fine arts studios, music practice rooms, associated dressing rooms, and classrooms; the PMAC is also the home of the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra and a frequent venue for touring companies.^[6]

Other large-scale buildings and athletic facilities include:

• The Rosemary campus: Designed by James Polshek, built 1971 for the merger of the two schools; a complex on the heights of the northeast campus comprising, among other buildings, Bronfman, originally a library, now the Learning Community Day Care Center; Macquire Gymnasium; and Brownell, which houses the offices of Alumni Relations, Development, and Information Technology.
• Sally Hart Lodge: Built 1850; the alumni center, guest house, and "hotel" of the school.
• Pratt Health Center: The infirmary, staffed by 24-hour duty nurses and a pediatrician resident on campus; with the offices of Counseling and Community Service.
• Worthington Johnson Athletic Center: Designed by Lewis Augustus Coffin, built 1932 by Choate staff, north wing added in 2002; originally called the Winter Exercise Building ("Winter Ex") and renamed in 1976; an enormous building whose central room was used by the Boston Braves in 1943 as their spring training infield; the WJAC contains two basketball courts, international squash courts, wrestling room, volleyball courts, suspended indoor track, ergometric room for crew, fitness and training rooms, and dance and aerobics studios.
• Remsen Arena: Built 1967, renovated 2006; ice hockey facility among whose recent alumnae are three Team USA Olympians.
• Larry Hart Pool: Built 1978; a 25-meter, 8-lane, solar-heated pool with electronic timing system.
• Bruce and Lueza Gelb Track: Built 2008; an 8-lane synthetic track with adjacent facilities for jumping and throwing events.
• Torrence Hunt Tennis Center: Built 1995; in a terraced garden setting, with clubhouse, coaches' offices, and tennis courts, six of which are USTA regulation.
• Sylvester Boathouse> Built 1985; on Lake Quonnipaug, the crew race course.^[7]

[edit] Athletics

Barber Bridge on the northeast campus

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, 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.

[edit] History: foundation and early years

Squire Stanley House, built 1690-1750 and visited in 1775 by George Washington. The Choate School began here in 1896. It is now a third form (first-year) girls dormitory.

The schools that would eventually become Choate Rosemary Hall were begun by members of two prominent New England families, the Choates and Atwaters.^[8]

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," 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).^[9] 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, a 25-year-old Briton teaching in New Jersey.^[10]

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. The school occupied a house belonging to Mrs. Choate, standing near the old Atwater homestead, which the members of the school will have the privilege of visiting as often as they like. ... 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'."

This original school building, "old" Atwater House (built 1758), was at the northwest corner of Christian and Elm streets, where "new" Atwater House now stands. The eight arriving girls lived on the second floor, the headmistress's residence and classrooms occupied the ground floor, and the dining room was in the basement. More space was soon required and neighboring houses were rented from the Choates. The "old Atwater homestead" (built 1774, now known as Homestead), stands at the center of the present day campus, on the northeast corner of Christian and Elm.

Caroline Ruutz-Rees (1864-1954), 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. Her motto was "No rot."^[11] She held a Lady Literate in Arts from the St Andrews University and would eventually earn a doctorate at Columbia. Ruutz-Rees (pronounced "Ar-Treece") quickly changed Rosemary Hall's mission from "domestic arts" to that of a contemporary boys school. Her personal curriculum for the next four decades had three core components: student self-government, contact sports, and a brutal workload of academics.

Ruutz-Rees taught the classical languages, history, and French. In 1897 she was the first headmistress of an American girls' school to prescribe uniform dress, and over time the Rosemarian uniform became increasingly elaborate, with cape, star-shaped berets, and much seasonal and occasional variety. Equally elaborate was Rosemarian ritual and tradition, most of it invented by Ruutz-Rees. Her faculty followed the British practice of wearing academic robes in class and addressing students by their last names. Ruutz-Rees herself always wore azure silk dresses and a necklace of amber beads.

The Homestead, built 1774. A small door leads to a secret passage behind the chimney that may have been a station on the Underground Railroad.

The Choate School was founded by William and Mary Choate in 1896. William Gardner Choate (1830-1921), a Harvard alumnus, was U.S. District Judge for the Southern Circuit of New York from 1878 to 1881, and after that a partner of Shipman, Barlow, Laroque, and Choate. He was a national authority on admiralty, railroad, bankruptcy, and corporation law.^[12] 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.

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, an alumnus of Bowdoin, was sixty-six years old, a widower, and had been principal of Woolsey School in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1872. He accepted the Choates' offer, perhaps not least because it would provide employment for his unmarried adult daughters, Leila, Elizabeth, and Helen. Six boys entered the new school in the fall of 1896, their average age about ten. They 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, an Atwater family residence since 1774.

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 which year headmistress and founder did not share the lectern at Prize Day and local newspapers published "denials" of a rumor that Ruutz-Rees would leave the school.^[13] 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, a wealthy enclave twenty-five miles from midtown Manhattan, joined forces to effect the removal of the school to their town.

Shipping magnate Nathaniel Witherell donated five acres 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 of 1900, when fifty-seven girl students moved into the Main Building, known as "The School," a U-shaped shingled house on Zaccheus Mead Lane. Other facilities on the property were a wood-frame building that would be the gym for many years, a tennis court, and a running track. In the next two decades the campus would build or acquire other "cottages" and lay out an Italian garden, the gift in 1912 of Janet Ruutz-Rees, mother of the headmistress.

The heart of the campus was St. Bede's Chapel, built with $15,000 collected at bake sales, teas, and benefits, and from every constituency of the school. Construction began in 1906 and consecration was performed October 18, 1909, by the Episcopal bishop of Connecticut, Chauncey Bunce Brewster. St. Bede's was Middle English Gothic, with granite walls, unnailed slate roof, hand-hewn timbers, Welsh red tile floor, and a 16-foot altar window of handmade English glass, designed by Christopher Whall. From 1915 to 1965 the handwritten name of every graduate was painted in gold on the ceiling.

In Wallingford, Mark Pitman had died on December 3, 1905. In the next three years a "Mr. Deane" and Sumner Blakemore were titular headmasters, 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 W.G. Choate introduced the man who would assume the headmastership in the fall, George St. John, and his wife Clara, sister of Yale president (1937-1951) Charles Seymour and descendant of Yale president (1740-1766) Thomas Clap. The St. Johns would occupy the headmaster's house, "The Lodge," for the next four decades.

George Clair St. John (1877-1966) was one of the generation of legendary, long-serving 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.^[14] St. John of Choate was succeeded in 1947 by his son Seymour and the St. John "dynasty" lasted 65 years to 1973.

[edit] History: timeline and milestones

Memorial House, built 1921, a third form (first-year) boys dormitory

• 1889 Rosemary Hall (RH): Mary Atwater Choate advertises in New York for a headmistress.
• 1890 RH: Foundation of the school by M.A. Choate; Caroline Ruutz-Rees begins her 48-year tenure; eight girls enroll. October 2, opening ceremonies held.
• 1891 RH: First election of Optima, or best girl; the honor was bestowed until 1977. First interscholastic cricket match played against Pelham Manor.
• 1892 RH: First publication of The Question Mark, a literary magazine, one of the earliest of its type in an American girls school.
• 1893 RH: Thekla Ruutz-Rees Goldmark, the headmistress's sister, begins her 50-year career as music teacher. In the spring, first Shakespeare play performed. First interscholastic cricket match played against Pelham Manor.
• 1894 RH: First interscholastic basketball game played against New Haven Normal School.
• 1895 RH: In May, first Sixth Form Walk, about 45 miles in three days, the route being Wallingford, Durham, Middletown, Southington, Wallingford.
• 1896 The Choate School (CS): Foundation of the school by William Gardner Choate and Mary Atwater Choate; Mark Pitman begins his nine-year tenure; six boys enroll.
• 1896 RH: Twenty girls enroll.
• 1897 CS: Choate House is built. Dramatic Club mounts its first play in Choate House library. Good Government Club begins, the precursor to a student council.
• 1897 RH: First election of The Committee, the student self-governance body; it lasted until 1971.
• 1898 RH: Sixth formers required to pass the Bryn Mawr College entrance exam in order to graduate; the requirement lasted 39 years.
• 1899 CS: Twenty boys enroll. 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 CS: In March, basketball game against Stearns School played at Company K Armory, with RH girls forming a cheering section. Debates held between two secret societies, the Owls (wisdom) and Helvetians (fidelity and honor). In the spring, first publication of The Brief, the yearbook. In the fall, first interscholastic football season, record of 2-1.
• 1900 RH: School relocates to Greenwich; 57 girls enroll.
• 1901 CS: Gymnasium built for $15,000, the gift of Julius Meyerowitz. "Ice polo," the precursor of hockey, plays four-game season.
• 1902 CS: Forty boys enroll. Atwater House, formerly occupied by Rosemary Hall, becomes the main building. The Cabin, a "science museum" and workshop, is donated by W.G. Choate. Boys install wiring in Choate House for room-to-room telephoning. First "Big Dance," eventually to become Festivities.
• 1904 CS: Library space is added to Atwater House. Charles Vezin Jr, future pole-vault world record-holder, is on the track team.
• 1905 CS: December 3, headmaster Mark Pitman dies.
• 1907 CS: Publication of The Chronicle, a newspaper adjunct to The Brief; it was precursor to The News.
• 1907 RH: Cambridge-educated Mary Elizabeth Lowndes begins her 31-year career as teacher and, from 1910 to 1938, co-headmistress.
• 1908 CS: In the fall, George St. John begins his 39-year tenure as headmaster.
• 1908 RH: First publication of The Answer Book, the yearbook; its title was suggested by The Question Mark; it merged with The Brief in 1973.
• 1909 CS: First Seal Prize awarded to outstanding sixth former (senior); since 1982 also awarded to sixth form girl.
• 1909 RH: October 18, consecration of St. Bede's Chapel.
• 1911 CS: John Dos Passos graduates.
• 1911 RH: Kindly Club founded by Janet Ruutz-Rees, mother of the headmistress, "to spread the spirit of kindliness throughout the school," and perform intramural and extramural charity.
• 1913 CS: St. Andrew's Camp founded for underprivileged boys from New York, staffed by Choate boys; it lasted until 1965.
• 1915 CS: First publication of The Lit, the literary magazine.
• 1918 RH: In the spring, first Garden Party; the event has lasted to the present.
• 1922 CS: First Deerfield Day; Choate varsity football wins 28-7.
• 1923 RH: November 11, the Main Building burns to the ground and all school records are destroyed.
• 1924 RH: The Main Building is rebuilt. 200 girls enroll, including 56 boarders.
• 1928 RH: Legendary field hockey program begins varsity three-year unbeaten streak.
• 1937 RH: March, Life magazine has four-page photo essay on The Mid, the annual February dance: "fifth and sixth form girls invited 76 boys from such places as Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Exeter."
• 1945 CS: Maiyeros a capella group begun by Duncan Phyfe '38.
• 1950 CS: First Project Day, brought on by a storm that downed trees; now called Community Day.
• 1958 RH: Whimawehs a capella group begins.
• 1970 CS: Book by Peter Prescott '53, son of Orville Prescott of the New York Times, examines the political turmoil in the school year 1967-68.^[15]
• 1980: Last Hurrah begins with the merger of Festivities and The Mid.
• 1989: First co-ed Deerfield Day, with girls' matches in soccer and field hockey.

[edit] Traditions

Andrew Mellon Library, built 1925

Choate Rosemary Hall is rich in traditional events:

• The Last Hurrah is the final social event for seniors, known (in British-influenced terminology^[16]) 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.

[edit] Publications

Archbold, built 1928, designed by Ralph Adams Cram

• Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, alumni magazine
• The Brief, founded 1900, yearbook
• The News, founded 1908, weekly newspaper; one of the oldest high school student-produced weeklies in the country
• The Lit, founded 1915, literary magazine; it published Edward Albee's first play
• The Press, twice-weekly sports publication
• The Horizon, academic review with student essays
• Beyond Choate, world and national news weekly^[17]

[edit] Notable alumni

The dining hall in Hill House west wing

• 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
• Melville Branch, urban planning pioneer and writer
• Arne H. Carlson, former Governor of Minnesota
• Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel
• Noah Charney, novelist and art historian
• Julie Chu, Olympic hockey player
• Glenn Close, five-time Oscar nominated actress
• Lewis Augustus Coffin, architect
• William F. Collins Jr., Cushman Award-winning neurosurgeon, department chair at Yale
• Caresse Crosby (Mary Phelps Jacob, Mrs. Harry Crosby), socialite, poet, founder of Black Sun Press
• 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
• Rebecca Miller, actress, screenwriter, director, novelist
• 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, Dartmouth history professor, winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award
• Douglass North, Nobel Laureate in Economics
• Victoria Nuland, permanent U.S. Representative to NATO
• Terry O'Neill, feminist, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW)
• Tony Powell, radio talk show host
• Richard Rockefeller, chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Angela Ruggiero, Olympic hockey player
• John Burnham Schwartz, novelist
• Martha Schwendener, lead singer and songwriter of Bowery Electric
• Bill Simmons, sportswriter
• Hedrick Smith, New York Times editor, Pulitzer Prize-winner, Emmy-winning PBS producer
• Seth Sternberg, founder of Meebo
• 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
• Kate Walbert, National Book Award-nominated novelist
• Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuk, Prince of Bhutan
• Frank "Muddy" Waters, American college football coach
• H. Bradford Westerfield, chair of Yale political science department, teacher of Presidents
• James Whitmore, film and Tony-winning stage actor
• Alexander Morgan Young, president of production at 20th Century Fox

[edit] Fictional alumni

Nichols House, built 1948, designed by Polhemus & Coffin. In 1971 it was the inaugural girls dormitory on the original boys campus

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

• In 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 and Harvard Medical School).
• In the TV show "The West Wing" the character Clifford Calley went to Choate (and Brown and Harvard Law School).
• In the TV show "Family Guy" (the episode "Road to Rupert") a man is told that, if he wins a bet, the dog Brian will lick peanut butter from "anywhere on your body." The man accepts the bet, saying, "Well, I did go to Choate." (The show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, is an alumnus of rival Connecticut prep school Kent).
• In the TV show "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law" one of Harvey's rival lawyers, Evelyn Spyro Throckmorton, went to Choate and Yale Law School.
• In the TV show "Gilmore Girls" the prep school "Chilton" is based on Choate.

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• Choate Rosemary Hall

Coordinates: 41°27′28″N 72°48′35″W / 41.45766°N 72.80973°W / 41.45766; -72.80973