Saint Grottlesex

Saint Grottlesex refers to several American college-preparatory boarding schools in New England that historically educated the social and economic elite of the Northeastern United States.

St. Paul's and St. Mark's were founded in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the other three St. Grottlesex schools were established at the turn of the twentieth century during a large boom in the boarding school industry[2] that also included Lawrenceville (refounded 1883), Milton (refounded 1884), Taft (founded 1890), Hotchkiss (1891), Choate (1896), Kent (1906), and Loomis (1914).

[4][5] St. Mark's, St. Paul's, St. George's, and Groton are all affiliated with the Episcopal Church,[6] the wealthiest Protestant denomination.

[9]) In addition, Middlesex, though ostensibly nonsectarian, was established by similarly upper-class Unitarian Boston Brahmins.

Although he complimented Exeter for its "national" reach and "democratic" character,[29] he encouraged boarding schools to temper America's "habitual regard for masses and majorities" with "aristocratic institutions" and "noble family stock[].

Even at mid-century, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, Groton, and Middlesex were still sending a larger percentage of their graduates to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton than their peer boarding schools.

[35][36]) In 1959, the university conducted an internal study to see which of its top 79 feeder schools produced the most honors graduates per capita.

[34] Reinforcing this trend, the middle schools that traditionally fed students to St. Grottlesex began sending most of their students to private day schools instead, leading Groton's admissions director to comment that "the competition [for spots] isn't as stiff as it used to be, and the classics scholars are getting worried about a decline in intellectual quality.

In 1992, St. Paul's appointed a new rector with a "mandate ... to improve the quality of the school academically," as "[n]obody had gone to Harvard in five years, except for legacies.

[63] St. Grottlesex alumni also historically dominated admission to Harvard's exclusive undergraduate final clubs.

The St. George's chapel (1928) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. [ 1 ]
The St. Grottlesex schools often favored anachronistic English architectural styles. At St. Mark's, many of the buildings are mock Tudor . [ 11 ]
Wealthy boarding schools could afford to sponsor a variety of extracurricular activities. In 1883, St. Paul's hosted the first organized ice hockey game in the United States. [ 23 ]
Middlesex named its main administrative building after Harvard president Charles William Eliot , an early supporter of the school. [ 33 ]
Eliot House was once considered a "bastion of ... champion rowers[] and Yankee aristocrats." [ 54 ] The school paper dryly remarked that to live in Eliot, recommendation letters were helpful but "it is not by any means necessary to ... be a Groton graduate." [ 55 ]