Gunston Campus Expands to 75 Acres with Land Acquisition

In a two-phase acquisition, Gunston has secured an additional 40-acres of waterfront property adjacent to the campus. This new property was part of the estate of the late Carter (Middleton) Bond, the granddaughter of the school’s founder, Samuel and Mary Middleton, and she passed away peacefully at the age of 91 in early 2022.

This acquisition includes a waterfront lot adjacent to Gunston’s current Corsica River shoreline, and it grows the campus footprint from 35 acres to 75 acres. Overall, the recent two-phase expansion has expanded the school’s campus by 114%.

Gunston’s Board Chair Patrick Shoemaker ’03 noted, “Gunston’s waterfront is central to our school’s identity, curriculum, and program. It extends a campus shoreline where so many students have thrived over the years, including me when I was a student here. Let me again acknowledge our Board of Trustees for their vision and skill over the past few months. This was a complex process, and the Board never lost sight of the acquisition’s long-term benefits to the school.”

Shoemaker continued, “We owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Bond’s son, Wick Sollers, for honoring his mother’s love and connection to the school; to trustee Chris McClary, P’21’23 for his skilled management of the transaction process, and to our Head of School John Lewis whose long-standing personal relationship with Mrs. Bond and other members of the Middleton family have kept their family legacy alive.”

Mr. Sollers shared, “My family has a deep affection for Gunston School, and we have been gratified to watch its extremely positive trajectory under the leadership of John Lewis and his team. We are delighted—and my Mom, her sister Emily Durham, and their parents and grandparents would also have been delighted—that Gunston will be the steward of and use wisely the beautiful land that it has acquired from my family.”

“In the immediate term,” explained Head of School John Lewis, “we will use this additional space to serve our athletic, environmental education, and summer programs. In the longer term, now that we have further enhanced one of most beautiful independent school campuses on the East Coast, we will need to reshape our campus master plan. Our ongoing goal is to serve as an essential part of the Queen Anne’s County and Midshore educational ecosystem for hundreds of students during the school year and through our Horizons and YMCA summer programs.”

Carter Bond spent her life amidst independent school education. Her father Atherton “Appy” Middleton was the former lacrosse coach at the University of Pennsylvania and headmaster of the St. Paul School for Boys. During the summers, Appy and his wife Catherine helped to operate Camp Gunston, then a popular overnight camp for students in the Mid-Atlantic region. Bond spent her summers on Gunston’s campus and remained closely connected to the school throughout the years. She was a graduate of Garrison Forest School and eventually became an athletic instructor at the St. Paul School for Boys.

Lewis shared, “My relationship with Mrs. Bond began during the first year of my tenure at Gunston. She shared fun and moving stories of the role Gunston’s campus played in the lives of young people during the middle of the 20th century. Although she resided in the Baltimore area, Gunston helped to shape her, and she always supported the school and our mission. We miss her, and we’re glad that her legacy to Gunston will endure.”