COMMON ROOTS | SHARED PURPOSE 31
CHOATE, MEANWHILE, WAS RELENTLESS IN BUILDING FACILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE to equip an ever-
growing student body. Enrollment surged to 339 in 1924, then to 452 in 1928. Growth stemmed from the School’s ethos, which held that bigger was better. It meant every boy could travel a track just right for him, whether accelerated coursework or slower paced studies. St. John was admittedly no great education theorist like RuutzRees, but he had a pragmatic sense for what would work. “We are not strong on theories,” St. John wrote in his memoir, Forty Years at School. “If we have any theory, it is that no two boys are alike and no one theory will suffice in working out the educational destiny of hundreds of different individuals.” Advice given to George St. John was very different from the conservatism forced upon Ruutz-Rees. He received encouragement from the likes of attorney Anson McCook to keep expanding Choate’s support network beyond current benefactors and to invest much more aggressively than Rosemary Hall. In this time, “The Chapel Foundation” was created to realize big dreams. Because Choate was then owned by a privately held corporation that paid shareholders six percent per annum, donations were not tax-deductible. In fact, gifts could be seen as potentially enriching for the stockholders, including St. John. Thus a nonprofit foundation was formed to remove any potential conflict of interest and to receive tax-deductible gifts for building projects. The first of many would be a campus house of worship. The Chapel, which St. John saw as “a rallying place for the best that is in boys and men,” took first priority. Boys needed spiritual formation, St. John believed. Daily worship would frame and anchor everything else at school. Fundraising for it was swift. Soon the foundation would be aptly renamed “The Chapel and Library Foundation,” with the next big project in mind. By 1925, the Chapel was in use. Andrew Mellon, a leading banker and industrialist, visited Choate in the early 1920s and was impressed enough to reserve a spot for his son, Paul. As Paul’s 1925 graduation date neared, Mellon requested a meeting with St. John and fatefully asked whether St. John would like him to build a library for Choate. The answer was a resounding yes. By 1926, Choate had a multistory facility with stacks, a spacious reading room, classrooms, and a dormitory. More construction was soon to follow. The John D. Archbold Infirmary (1928) and an expanded dining hall (1929) rounded out the decade that would, more than any other, outfit Choate with core facilities to meet the diverse needs of students and masters.
c o m m o n r o o t s
s h a r e d p u r p o s e
TOP LEFT Winter Exercise
BOTTOM Mellon Library
Building exterior, circa 1940
exterior, circa 1939
TOP RIGHT Winter Ex interior