Rosemary Hall was an independent girls school at Ridgeway and Zaccheus Mead Lane in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was later merged into Choate Rosemary Hall and moved to the Choate boys' school campus in Wallingford, Connecticut.
The Greenwich campus of Rosemary Hall was opened in 1900. The oldest surviving building was built in 1909. The Greenwich campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998 for its architectural significance. The listing includes 16 contributing buildings and one other contributing structure. The historic site's listing area is . and
The Brunswick School now owns the property. It plans to convert the site into a preschool and housing for employees.
School and Foundation officers
Headmistresses: Caroline Ruutz-Rees 1890–1938; Eugenia Baker Jessup '10, 1938–53, 1957–58; Helen MacKissick Williamson 1953–57; Alice McBee 1958–71; Elizabeth Winslow Loomis 1971–73. Presidents of Rosemary Hall Foundation: Caroline Ruutz-Rees 1890–1938 (headmistress and owner); Catherine B. Blanke '25, 1950–55; Franklin E. Parker, Jr. 1950–54 (chair); Elizabeth B. MacDonald '21, 1956–60; H. Chandler Turner, Jr. 1960–62; Julian M. Avery 1962–65; Gerrish H. Milliken 1965–74.
History
Early years 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 Rosemary Hall campus.Ephraim Orcutt Jameson, The Choates in America, 1643–1896 (Ipswich, Mass., 1896); Charles Henry Stanley Davis, History of Walligford, Conn. (Meriden, Conn., 1870)
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)."A Genteel Nostalgia, Going Out of Business," The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2003, p. 137 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.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.
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 Choate Rosemary Hall campus, on the northeast corner of Christian and Elm.
Caroline Ruutz-Rees (1865–1954), headmistress 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.""Rosemary's 50th," Time, Nov. 4, 1940, p. 137 She held a Lady Literate in Arts from the University of St Andrews and would eventually earn a doctorate at Columbia. Ruutz-Rees (pronounced "Roots-Reese") 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.
In 1896 the Choate School was founded in Wallingford by Mary Choate and her husband William. He 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 in New York City."Memorial of William Gardner Choate," New York County Lawyers' Association Yearbook 1921 (New York, 1921), pp. 199-200 There was no formal relationship between the Choates' new boys school and their other foundation, Rosemary Hall, a hundred yards to the east on Christian Street in Wallingford, but there were coeducational audiences for plays and recitals and Mary Choate hosted dances at the Homestead, an Atwater family residence since 1774.
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.Generous, op cit, p. 17 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 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. 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 altar window of handmade English glass, designed by Christopher Whall. According to the November 25, 1909 issue of Leslie's Weekly," it was "begun three years ago by the girls themselves who collected stones and carried them one by one to the spot which the building was to occupy." From 1915 to 1965 the handwritten name of every graduate was painted in gold on the ceiling. On October 17, 2009, the centennial of St. Bede's was celebrated in Greenwich by Rosemarians past and present, with the Whimawehs singing traditional RH songs.Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin, Summer 2010, p. 26
Building post-merger history The building property later became the Daycroft School. The campus previously was about large, but in 1984 the school sold of land for $1,100,000, and so the size of the campus was down to ; the sale reduced the ratio of land to building space, and so the school administration unknowingly caused the facility to go against the zoning regulations of the Town of Greenwich. Daycroft asked for a variance to exempt the institution from needing to raze buildings and/or purchase additional land. The variance was not given to the institution, but the Greenwich town government never enforced the requirements of the zoning up to the time Daycroft was disestablished.
In 1989 Daycroft sold it to the Japanese Educational Institute of New York (JEI; ニューヨーク日本人教育審議会 Nyūyōku Nihonjin Kyōiku Shingi Kai), and in 1992 the campus began housing the Japanese School of New York (Greenwich Japanese School). Because Daycroft had unknowingly violated town code by selling land and having too high of a building/land ratio, the Japanese school faced a possibility of demolishing historic buildings, but ultimately did not do so after an agreement with the town government was made.
In 2006 the JEI sold the building to the Westchester Fairfield Hebrew Academy (later Carmel Academy),Hagey, Keach. "." Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. September 18, 2006. 6A. Retrieved on January 9, 2012. - Clipping from Newspapers.com. and so both schools shared the site.Berger, Joseph. "Connecticut Journal – A Kinder, Gentler, More Kosher Greenwich." The New York Times. June 18, 2006. Retrieved on January 9, 2012. In 2020 Carmel closed its school operations. Brunswick School planned to convert the site into a preschool and housing for employees. The Japanese School had moved into another facility in Greenwich. Brunswick acquired the former Carmel Academy site in September 2023.
Timeline 1889: Mary Atwater Choate advertises in New York for a headmistress. 1890: Foundation of the school by M.A. Choate; Caroline Ruutz-Rees begins 48 years as headmistress; 8 girls enroll. October 2, opening ceremonies held. 1891: First election of Optima, or best girl; the honor was bestowed until 1977. 1892: First publication of The Question Mark, a literary magazine, one of the earliest of its type in an American girls school. 1893: Spring term, first Shakespeare play performed. Rosemary Hall hosts Mrs. Hazen's School of Pelham Manor, N.Y., in what is regarded as the first interscholastic sports event between girls schools in American history. 1894: First interscholastic basketball game played against New Haven Normal School.
1895: In May, first Sixth Form Walk, about in three days, the route being Wallingford, Durham, Middletown, Southington, Wallingford. 1896: 20 girls. Frederick Hulseberg is hired to coach the cricket team, thereby becoming the first girls cricket coach in America. 1897: First election of The Committee, the student self-governance body; it lasted until 1971. 1898: Sixth formers required to pass the Bryn Mawr College entrance exam in order to graduate; the requirement lasted 39 years. 1900: School relocates to Greenwich. 57 girls. 1907: Cambridge-educated Mary Elizabeth Lowndes begins 31 years as teacher and, from 1910, co-headmistress.