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From the Archives: SPS Under Construction

Lisa Laughy — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:16:17 +0000

As construction continues on Dunbarton Road and the new Lindsay Center for Mathematics and Science, it brings to mind other major construction projects from the history of St. Paul’s School. Although difficult to tell from inside or outside of the New Chapel, an entire section was added to the nave forty-two years after original construction began. The images below depict the expansion at its most dramatic point:

In 1928 the New Chapel was expanded to accommodate the increasing number of students at St. Paul’s School. The Sesquicentennial Exhibit offers this description of the photos:

In 1928 the Chapel was deconsecrated and workmen began to slice through the brick walls. The School held its collective breath as the eastern end of the vast structure, seemingly too narrow to hold itself erect, was slid upon tracks to its new location. The task of reconstruction then went forward as the void between the two parts of the old building was filled with Gothic tracery.

See if you can spot this particularly brave fellow in the picture above!

From the Archives: Dunbarton Road Construction

Lisa Laughy — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:00:37 +0000

Dunbarton Road, once called New Dunbarton Road, is undergoing construction as part of the site preparation for the building of the Lindsay Center for Mathematics and Science. Rectory Road, the original Dunbarton Road, was once the main route from Concord to Dunbarton and beyond. It wasn’t always the quiet roadway through the center of the grounds that it is today, and by the early years of the 20th century the increase in automobile traffic had become a menace. The New Dunbarton Road was opened in June of 1920 as a way to re-direct traffic away from the center of the grounds.

The images below were discovered in the Archives as part of a personal photo album given by an unknown donor. The photo album consists of several dozen black and white photographs of construction at SPS during the first few decades of the 20th century.

Clearing the way: A team of work horses is used to remove rocks from the road. The corner of the Red Barn can be seen on the left.

Grading the road: Alumni House is on the left and the Red Barn is on the right. The view is looking toward the entrance to the School.

Heavy metal: A close-up of the steam roller seen the previous image.

Read more about the history of the New Dunbarton Road in this Fall 2008 Alumni Horae article (PDF file) by clicking HERE.

From the Archives: Delphian Football Eleven, 1897

Lisa Laughy — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:43:22 +0000

The following photo from the St. Paul’s School Archives, located in the basement of Ohrstrom Library, was scanned recently as part of the planning process for a digitization project. From time-to-time we will be sharing some of these newly scanned images on the Ohrstrom Blog to provide a glimpse into the wealth of visual history contained within the Archives’ photo collections.

The first photo in this blog series is of the Delphian Club football team from 1897. Each of the three clubs at St. Paul’s School – the Isthmian Club, the Old Hundred Club (both founded in 1859), and the Delphian Club (founded in 1888), had three strings of eleven players on their club football teams. This photo is likely of the first string, the Eleven I. It is easy to imagine that the Delphian Club colors of maroon and black are being worn in this photo.

Although there are no names listed on the photo itself, The Record, St. Paul’s School, 1898, lists the members of “The Delphian Club Foot-Ball Elevens, Fall, 1897″ as follows:

Henry Blackstone Farrar, Captain

Line: Prescott M. Metcalf, Ethelbert I. Low, Ernest T. H. Metcalf, Douglas Kimball, Peter F. Rothermel, Robert W. Glendinning, Franklin Farrel, Jr.

Quarter-Back: Henry B. Farrar

Half-Backs: William C. Douglas, William Frew

Full-Back: Lion Gardiner

Fall of 1897 was not a good season for the Delphians – they didn’t win any of the four games played, and scored zero points. An average of the previous ten years has them in better standing, winning 18 of a possible 38 games, and putting them second to the Isthmian’s record of 30 out of 38. This detail of the photo gives a better view of the clothing worn to play football at that time – very little padding and quite a few rips and tears.

New Archives Online Exhibit: The Rectors of SPS

Lisa Laughy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:05:39 +0000

Ohrstrom Library is pleased to announce the addition of a new archives online exhibit: The Rectors of St. Paul’s School.

Since its founding in 1856, St. Paul’s School is fortunate to have enjoyed strong leadership in its Rectors. The Rectors exhibit in the Archives section of Ohrstrom Library’s website presents the succession of these leaders through photographs and short biographies, and serves as a brief introduction to the fascinating history of leadership at St. Paul’s School.

Much of the text and perspectives shared in the brief biographies that accompany photographs of the Rectors were drawn directly from two authoritative and well-loved volumes about St. Paul’s School: A brief history of St. Paul’s School, 1856-1996 by August Heckscher (located in Ohrstrom at: 373 Sa2H) and St. Paul’s School, 1855 – 1934 by Arthur Stanwood Pier (located in Ohrstrom at: 373 Sa2). In addition to reading these two volumes, you can find even more fascinating detail on each of the Rectors by searching the Alumni Horae digital archive, accessible online by clicking HERE.

Alumni Horae Digital Archive Launch

Lisa Laughy — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:51:56 +0000

Lisa Laughy – Archives Assistant

Ohrstrom Library is proud to announce a special Anniversary Weekend preview of the newly launched Alumni Horae Digital Archive.

Alumni Horae, the St. Paul’s School alumni magazine, is published four times a year by the Alumni Association in order to engage the alumni community of SPS, to connect alumni to each other, and to enrich the School community. The magazine contains alumni news, features, book reviews, Form notes, and obituaries as well as information about current School life and athletics.

The entire print run of the St. Paul’s School alumni magazine, has been scanned and is now accessible online. Every issue of the Alumni Horae from 1921 to the present has been professionally scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to create a searchable online database. The articles are also available in PDF format, which reproduces every page of the Alumni Horae as it was originally published, including all diagrams, tables, and photographs. The PDF files are available for downloading and printing.

Click HERE to access the Alumni Horae Digital Archive.

Click HERE to access the user’s guide to searching and browsing the archive.

Postcards from the Past: SPS Historic Postcard Exhibit

Lisa Laughy — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:00:35 +0000

Lisa Laughy - Archives Assistant

The Historic Postcard online exhibit has now been updated to reflect the redesign of the Ohrstrom Library website. Originally created in 2006, the exhibit has a new look as well as some new features.

Here is a description of the exhibit excerpted from the “About” page:

The SPS Historical Postcard exhibit presents images of St. Paul’s School from the late 1800s to the present. The scenes and buildings depicted by these postcards provide glimpses of the School as it has grown and changed over the decades. Images of vanished buildings, unfamiliar perspectives on buildings still in service, and of the School’s changing landscape (for example, the School’s stately elm trees from the days before Dutch Elm disease) offer an evocative mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar, and invite us to view the School today with a fresh perspective.

The exhibit contains 79 postcard images gathered from the SPS Archives and loaned by friends of St. Paul’s School. It includes individual pages for each postcard and a slideshow of all 79 postcard images. Images are of vistas of years past, including familiar as well as “vanished” buildings.

Read more about the Postcard Exhibit HERE.

Access the Postcard Exhibit Galleries and Slideshow HERE.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Display at Ohrstrom Library

Lisa Laughy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:00:52 +0000

Lisa Laughy – Archives Assistant

Ohrstrom Library marks the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. Day remembrance with a look into the St. Paul’s School Archives. SPS Archivist, David Levesque has assembled a display of books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement combined with related Archives materials from the history of St. Paul’s. The display is on view in the Baker Reading Room starting today and will be available through the end of the month. Be sure to give yourself a few minutes to look over the materials on display and see how the day has been observed at SPS in years past.

New Archives Online Exhibit: The Roll of Honor

Lisa Laughy — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:00:02 +0000

Lisa Laughy -Archives Assistant

A new St. Paul’s School Archives online exhibit has been created making two publications available to read online through the Ohrstrom Library Website. The Roll of Honor: St. Paul’s School in the Great War and The Roll of Honor: St. Paul’s School in World War II reproduces two out-of-print and hard to find books originally published by the SPS Alumni Association: St. Paul’s School in the Great War (published in 1926) and St. Paul’s School in the Second World War (published in 1950). The books contain short biographies of St. Paul’s Alumni who fought and gave their lives in the two World Wars. The online exhibit contains direct scans of the pages from the books which have been converted into PDF files for easy reading online. The two exhibits together contain one hundred and fifty two short biographies of St. Paul’s Alumni.

Visit the online exhibit:

The Roll of Honor: St. Paul’s School in the Great War, 1914-1918

The Roll of Honor: St. Paul’s School in the Second World War

From the Archives: Millville Memories on Display

Lisa Laughy — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:00:31 +0000

David Levesque - Technical Services Librarian / Archivist

From the earliest days, almost from the School’s founding in 1856, members of the SPS community have documented their lives and the life of the School through diaries, letters and memoirs. The SPS Archives holds many examples of this living history, giving us a glimpse into the School as it was and as it has evolved over the years. The Rural Record, for example, is a daily handwritten journal begun in 1857 and continued by various faculty members for almost fifty years. The daily happenings of the School, both momentous and mundane, including the temperature and weather conditions taken at three different times of day, were recorded in these journals.

Rectors and faculty members also kept personal diaries. For instance, Willard Scudder, Form of 1885, kept diaries that span almost his entire life, from 1893 up to his death in 1936, after forty-three years of devoted service to the School. We are fortunate that student letters from the past have also survived, such as the letters of George Farnam Brown, Form of 1906, who wrote home almost every week while he was a student at SPS from 1903 to 1906. Many SPS graduates have also written memoirs of their SPS experience. One notable example is Black Ice by Lorene Cary, Form of 1974.

No matter the format, these writings allow us to experience the SPS of the past and serve to give us a deeper understanding of the history and traditions that have shaped SPS today. These diaries, letters and memoirs remind us of the love and labor of those who came before us who cared deeply for the School, and who wished to preserve their memories of Millville. We are in their debt for capturing in words the past that informs us today.

See the new archives display - Millville Memories: Diaries, Letters and Memoirs from the SPS Archives – in the upper level gallery of Ohrstrom Library.

See the complete letter shown above – including transcription, on the Ohrstrom Library Archives website HERE.