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Pomfret School

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Coordinates: 41°53′10″N 71°57′54″W / 41.8862°N 71.9651°W / 41.8862; -71.9651
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Pomfret School
Address
Map
398 Pomfret Street

Pomfret
,
Connecticut
06258

United States
Coordinates41°53′10″N 71°57′54″W / 41.8862°N 71.9651°W / 41.8862; -71.9651
Information
TypePrivate, Coeducational, Secondary, Boarding
MottoCerta Viriliter
(Strive Valiantly)
Established1894 (130 years ago) (1894)
FounderWilliam E. Peck
CEEB code070615
ChairmanJustin P. Klein
Head of schoolJ. Timothy Richards
Grades9–12, postgraduate
Enrollment350[1]
Campus typeRural
Student Union/AssociationOlmsted Student Union Pomfret Alumni Association
Color(s)Red and black
  
Athletics42 interscholastic teams
MascotGriffin
NewspaperPontefract
Websitewww.pomfret.org

Pomfret School is an independent, coeducational, college preparatory boarding and day school in Pomfret, Connecticut, United States, serving 350 students in grades 9 through 12 and post-graduates. Located in the Pomfret Street Historic District, the average class size is 12 students with a student–teacher ratio of 6:1. Over 80% of faculty hold master's degrees or doctorates. Typically, 40% of students receive financial aid or support from over 60 endowed scholarship funds (see Endowed scholarships), 20% are students of color, 21% are international students.[1]

The school opened on October 3, 1894,[2][3] founded by William E. Peck and his wife Harriet.[3]

School profile

Adam Hochschild, who attended Pomfret in the 1950s, described it in 1982 as "basically a school for the rich". The campus is a "New World copy" of the traditional British elitist school model. Calling teachers "masters" and freshmen "weenies", as was the case during Hochshild's day, was a way of evoking old world charm. He classified it as one of about twenty select American schools, all built around 1900 or before, which were until the 1960s "upper-class single-sex boarding schools". He noted that while the school library was modest and the science laboratories average, this school with only about 200 students had "amazingly lavish sports facilities. Squash courts: tennis courts; football, baseball, soccer and track fields; a gym with an indoor track and rowing machines; rifles for target shooting: a ski jump on one hill and a slope with a rope tow on another." The standards have risen since: Pomfret now has an indoor hockey rink and four indoor, heated tennis courts.[4]

Campus

The 500 acre campus, established in 1894, was designed by landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted,[5] and expanded over the years to its current size through gifts and acquisitions. The facility's master plan was designed in 1906 by American architect Ernest Flagg.[6]

Notable buildings

A number of Pomfret's buildings and houses are listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).[7][8]

Memorial Chapel

Holiday Carols in Clark Chapel

Dedicated on St. George's Day, 1908, and consecrated on May 16, 1909,[9] the chapel was designed by Ernest Flagg[10] and houses three extraordinary stained glass windows from 13th century France.[11][12][13]

The 13th century rose window from St. Julien Cathedral, France, Clark Memorial Chapel

The ten-foot-high rose window above the chapel doorway and two of the arched-top, oblong windows along the walls are apparently from the 13th century cathedral, Saint Julien of Tours, on the Loire river in France. The ancient windows were donated to Pomfret in 1947. They are recorded as having been imported to the U.S. in 1904; they were auctioned in New York to an anonymous bidder and installed in Clark Chapel in 1949.[11][12]

du Pont Library

It was designed by Cambridge Seven Associates, finished in 1969, and won many awards.

Jahn Ice Hockey Rink

It was designed by architect Helmut Jahn and finished in 2005.[14]

Parsons Lodge

It won the 2010 AIA Connecticut People's Choice Award for “the building in which people would most like to study”; 2009 Best Fireplace Award from Masonry Construction magazine.[15]

Athletics

Pomfret Crew Regatta 2011

A member of the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC),[16] Pomfret fields 42 teams in 15 different sports[17] and has won numerous championships during its history in both men's and women's sports.[18][dubious – discuss] Recently, Girls Varsity Volleyball won the 2015 NESPAC Class B Championship.[19] Boys Varsity Hockey won the 2017 NEPSAC Small School Championship.[20]

Arts

Pomfret's arts programs are guided by practicing artists and offer formal classes and other opportunities for training and participation in drawing, painting, digital arts, film and video, sculpture and ceramics, photography, music, theatre, and dance. Performance opportunities are available to all students in theater, dance, and music throughout the year. Facilities include sculpture, ceramics, painting, and drawing studios; rehearsal and practice rooms for dance and music; the Schoppe Dance Studio; Hard Auditorium stage; and a photography laboratory.

The Pomfret Grifftones and Chorus tour within the United States and overseas for concerts; in 2015 they were in Italy where they performed in Florence, Lucca, and St. Stephen's School in Rome, and in the United States at the University of Connecticut (all March 2015).[21]

Crisis in the 1960s and 1970s

Pomfret went through a crisis in the 1960s and 70s, making "desperate fundraising appeals" necessary. Pomfret alumnus Adam Hochschild claimed that since "Pomfret had never been quite in the top rank of New England boarding schools," the economic crisis was even more dire for them. One year, the entering class did not reach the expected (small) number of students. Teachers were compelled to take ten-percent less in pay. Some started planning for the school's closing. In a men's toilet on campus, someone scrawled on the wall over the toilet paper dispenser: “Pomfret diplomas. Take one.”[4]

Notable alumni

Sarah vaillancourt.jpg
Olympic gold medalist Sarah Vaillancourt
U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius
Novelist Ridley Pearson
International Court of Justice judge Antônio Trindade

Notable faculty

Historical notes

Pomfret's coat of arms

Designed by Harriet Peck Jones, wife of founder and first Headmaster William E. Peck, Pomfret's Coat of Arms is derived from that of the Lords of Pontefract Castle in the town of Pomfret in West Yorkshire, England.[27][dubious – discuss] In Elizabethan times, the castle and the surrounding medieval market town of Pontefract were referred to as "Pomfret".[28] England's King Richard II died in the castle, by starvation or murder,[29] and the castle has a significant role in William Shakespeare's plays The Life and Death of King Richard the Second, V.i, V.iii, and the penultimate scene V.v which is set entirely in Pomfret Castle; and The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, II.iv, III.i, III.ii, III.iii, all set in Pomfret Castle, and V.iii.

Ernest Flagg's architecture for Pomfret

Architectural rendering and facilities plan of Pomfret School c. 1906
Construction of the George Newhall Clark '04 Memorial Chapel at Pomfret School c. 1908

In the first decade of the 1900s, Pomfret was transformed from mainly Colonial Revival buildings to a "planned institution."[30] company. By 1906, architect Ernest Flagg had designed a master plan for the school.[30] The pavilion arrangement reflected the influence of Thomas Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia.

For the chapel, commissioned by Edward Clark in 1907, Flagg chose Norman architecture as an appropriate model and emulated the rich textures of the unpolished stone-work characteristic of that style.[31]

Following a visit to the campus in 1910, when construction was nearing completion, Flagg compared Pomfret to his design of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, remarking, "The school is better architecturally than Annapolis." While his design for Annapolis had been repeatedly altered by the Navy during construction, the work at Pomfret scrupulously followed his design.[32] Flagg hoped that his work for Pomfret would set a trend and lead to a "national style of architecture."[32]

References

  1. ^ a b "Boarding School Review". Boarding School Review. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  2. ^ Private Independent Schools. Bunting and Lyon. 1980. p. 119.
  3. ^ a b Pearson, Brad (1993). Stone, Emerson (ed.). The Spirit That Is Pomfret (First ed.). Kashino Design Enterprises. pp. 3–5. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
  4. ^ a b Hochschild, Adam (May 1982). "True Prep". Mother Jones: 41–48.
  5. ^ "Tom Irwin". tomirwin.com. Tom Irwin, Inc. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  6. ^ Bacon, Mardges (1986). Ernest Flagg: beaux-arts architect and urban reformer (!st ed.). MIT Press. pp. 134–137. ISBN 978-0262022224.
  7. ^ "Pomfret Street Historic District". focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/98000372.pdf. National Park Services. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  8. ^ "Pomfret Street Historic District". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Services. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  9. ^ "Messrs. Czelusniak et Dugal". czelusniakdugal.com. Messrs. Czelusniak et Dugal, Inc. Archived from the original on 18 November 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  10. ^ "Philadelphia Architects and Buildings". Philadelphiabuildings.org. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  11. ^ a b Geissinger, Anne (December 14, 1985). "Chapel Windows Causing Stir To Stained Glass Experts". Vol. 1, no. 43. Observer Extra.
  12. ^ a b "Chapel Windows Causing Stir To Stained Glass Experts". Hartford Courant. June 26, 1983.
  13. ^ "The Pomfret School George Newhall Clark Memorial Chapel Pomfret, Connecticut". czelusniakdugal.com. Messrs. Czelusniak et Dugal, Inc. Archived from the original on 18 November 2015. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
  14. ^ Pearson, Brad (1993). Stone, Emerson (ed.). The Spirit That Is Pomfret (first ed.). Kashino Design Enterprises, Inc. p. 204. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
  15. ^ "Parsons Lodge". newenglanddesign.com. New England Design, Inc. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  16. ^ "New England Preparatory Schools Athletic Council". nepsac.org. RS SchoolToday.com. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  17. ^ "Boarding School Review". boardingschoolreview.com. Boarding School Review, LLC.
  18. ^ Pearson, Brad (1993). Stone, Emerson (ed.). The Spirit That Is Pomfret (first ed.). Kashino Design Enterprises, Inc. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
  19. ^ "MaxPreps". maxpreps.com. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  20. ^ "MaxPreps". www.maxpreps.com. CBS Broadcasting, Inc. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  21. ^ Sophia, Clarke. "Clarke Productions". singinginitaly.weebly.com. Weebly. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
  22. ^ Blayney, MIchael S. (1986). Democracy's Aristocrat: Life of Herbert C. Pell. University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-5193-9.
  23. ^ "Pell, Herbert Claiborne, Jr". bioguide.congress.gov. U.S. Congress. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
  24. ^ "U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
  25. ^ Arnold, Laurence (January 3, 2012). "William Carey, Investor Who Backed Business Schools, Dies at 81". Bloomberg Business. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
  26. ^ "Biography | Connecticut House Democrats". housedems.ct.gov. Archived from the original on 2017-04-23.
  27. ^ Pearson, Brad (1993). Stone, Emerson (ed.). The Spirit That Is Pomfret (first ed.). Kashino Design Enterprise, Inc. p. 3. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
  28. ^ Padgett, Lorenzo (2015). Chronicles of Old Pontefract (Classic Reprint). Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1331563914.
  29. ^ Nigel, Saul (2008). Richard II. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07003-3.
  30. ^ a b Bacon, Mardges (1986). Ernest Flagg: beaux-arts architect and urban reformer. New York: Architectural History Foundation. p. 135. ISBN 0262022222.
  31. ^ Bacon, Mardges (1986). Ernest Flagg: beaux-arts architect and urban reformer. New York: Architectural History Foundation. pp. 136–137. ISBN 0262022222.
  32. ^ a b Bacon, Mardges (1986). Ernest Flagg: beaux-arts architect and urban reformer. New York: Architectural History Foundation. p. 137. ISBN 0262022222.
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