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Founding Vision
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View of Old School from the northwest, c. 1902.
Before Main Drive led to Old School and before the Chapel rose from Aquidneck Island — a man stood on a Hilltop.
John B. Diman toured a field above Second Beach in Middletown, Rhode Island, on an autumn day in 1900 with an architect from his cousin’s firm in Providence.
He was looking toward the future …
Armistead Cottage, the first home of St. George's School in 1896.
Growing a school
JOHN DIMAN FOUNDED our school in the fall of 1896 after receiving his master of arts degree from Harvard the previous spring. The son of Emily Stimson Diman and Jeremiah Diman, a Congregational minister and noted Brown University professor of history and political economy, John grew up in Providence, the second oldest of four children. He graduated from Brown University in 1885 and received a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1885 from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 1888, John became the first permanent rector of the newly-established St. Columba's Church in Middletown, and for several years also taught at the University Grammar School in Providence. Like his father, his interests in religion and education were hallmarks of his career. John was a passionate champion of education, and twice served as president of the Harvard Teacher's Association.
St. George’s, originally named Mr. Diman’s School for Boys, opened for the academic year in the small Armistead Cottage on present-day Hunter Avenue with 11 students and one teacher.
“The impression of that first year is very distinct in my mind and it is made up of pictures which bespeak the very smallest beginnings of things,” Diman recalled in the 1906 Bulletin. “Rooms so draughty that the bedroom floors were half covered with snow in the winter, hardly any athletic field at all, a pleasant, jolly lot of boys who seemed utterly unacquainted with the deficiencies of the equipment and who helped lay the foundations upon which all the future years were to build.”
Ever with an eye on expanding, Diman moved his school one year later into Swann Villa on Cliff Avenue and stayed there for four years, using the building with maximum efficiency. The large ballroom at the property was converted into a schoolroom, bedrooms became laboratories, plays were rehearsed in the basement, and a bathtub was even used as a lily pond and aquarium.
The growing demand for admission, however, soon surpassed the space to accommodate students. Diman knew St. George’s would have to evolve beyond renting space and make a permanent home to compete with other, well-established schools of the time.
In 1900, Diman decided to incorporate the school as a private business, allowing stockholders to help purchase the 12-acre site overlooking the Atlantic Ocean as the permanent home for the school and invest in a new building’s construction.
Not all of the school’s supporters initially agreed with Diman’s decision to move St. George’s to the Middletown Hilltop. Some thought it was too close to Newport or not close enough to St. Columba’s Chapel for church services. However, after having spent considerable time carefully surveying all possibilities in the area, Diman convinced others to back his dream. By the end of 1900, he secured the funding, along with an option to purchase more acres in the future.
And more would certainly be needed in the years to come.
“It should be said, too, that in planning this building and its location, the glance ahead has been far into the future,” Diman wrote in The Herald on Feb. 25, 1901. “… And it is hoped that, whatever is done in the next year or two, it will only be a step in the transition of the school from its present small beginnings into a size and an estate that will place it among the large and important schools of the country.”
Mr. Diman in front of Swan Villa, 1896.
The historic move
SITTING ON the eastern veranda of Swann Villa, students and teachers could look across First Beach Bay and see their new school rising.
By autumn 1901, work was completed and St. George’s School moved into its new home with close to 40 students enrolled. The new building was designed by Clarke & Spaulding, a leading architectural firm in Providence, of which Diman’s cousin, Prescott Clarke, was a principal.
Known as “Old School” today, it was intended to serve nearly all functions — classrooms, dormitories, faculty residences, library, kitchen, dining room, and infirmary.
Diman’s aspiration to further grow St. George’s soon after its move to the Hilltop was cautiously acknowledged in the Trustees’ 1905 Annual Report.
“It is the desire of the Head Master that in course of time the school shall be further enlarged. The Trustees are in accord with this wish; but before launching out on further expense it is the hope that all the large debt incurred shall be materially reduced.”
Two years later, St. George’s School began its next transition. The school was rechartered as a nonprofit educational institution, mostly at the urging of William Wood, father of two St. George’s graduates, who wished to make a generous donation for the construction of Arden Hall, but who was dismayed to find the school was a for-profit venture. Another large donation that year created the iconic King Hall as the school’s dining hall.
Today, with the support of countless generous benefactors, the campus has grown to 125 acres and 26 school buildings — and the school community has grown to 381 students and their families, 200-plus faculty and staff, and nearly 8,000 alumni.
A dream realized
WHEN DIMAN LEFT his position at St. George’s School after 20 years, his vision for the school’s continued development remained. Diman’s successor, Head of School Stephen Cabot, assured alumni of as much at a dinner in 1925.
“I want to state right here that I do not wish you to feel that St. George’s School is in any way self-satisfied,” Cabot said. “I can think of no greater disaster to any institution of learning than to become static. Unless it moves on, not merely in material growth but in intellectual and moral and spiritual growth, it is beginning to go downhill.”
The location atop the hill selected by Diman for St. George’s contained many advantages that helped guide the school’s growth — and today continues to be among its greatest assets. In the 10th anniversary edition of the Bulletin, Diman wrote of the impact a school with such a grand setting could have on students.
“I have spoken of the opportunities that our position gives for special forms of study and sport, but more important than any of these is the influence that beautiful natural surroundings must exert upon character,” Diman wrote. “A noble prospect must have, it seems to me, an ennobling effect upon the natures of those who habitually gaze upon it.”
And 125 years later, Diman’s sentiment has withstood the passage of time.
“Here, morning and night, year in and year out,” he continued, “we look out over long beaches and sunny hillsides and ponds and woods and meadows to the dim and distant ocean horizon. … In many students hearts the desire is born here to live worthily and to strive for truth and honor for all their days.”
