FEATURE
Breaking New Ground This year, Pomfret has embarked on a flurry of capital improvement projects.
W
hen Harold Harvey ’12 arrived as a wide-eyed first former in 1906, Pomfret was a campus of cottages. There wasn’t a single stone or brick building anywhere. When he graduated six years later, the physical plant had been utterly transformed. Between 1907 and 1912, Pomfret erected eight new buildings, seven of which were paid for entirely by donors. These included the School Building, the four Bricks (Dunworth, Pontefract, Plant, and Bourne), Pyne Infirmary, Clark Memorial Chapel, and Lewis Gymnasium. It also included our most iconic monument, the Proctor Sundial, donated by William Ross Proctor. With the exception of the headmaster’s house, and one or two less conspicuous structures, the old frame buildings Harold Harvey knew and loved were gone. The pace of change must have felt exhilarating, if not a little dizzying. In the decades since, the School has continued to add new buildings to the original campus core: Hard Auditorium in 1928, the Main House in 1956, Monell Science Building in 1958, Brown Rink in 1963, du Pont Library in 1969, Strong Field House in 1983, Centennial Center for Arts
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POMFRET WINTER 2022
and Academics in 2000, Lasell Alumni House in 2001, Olmsted Student Union and Corzine Athletic Center in 2004, Jahn Rink and Blodgett Boathouse in 2005, Blodgett Tennis Center in 2007, Parsons Lodge in 2010, Campbell House in 2017, and our newest building, the Health and Wellness Center, in 2018. Of course, with any kind of progress, there also comes a certain kind of loss. “I miss them, in spite of my respectful admiration for their more efficient and solid successors,” wrote the author Edward Streeter, Class of 1910, referring to the original cottages. “Each of those old buildings had a character of its own. The floor and stair treads creaked, but each in their own individual way. Each house had its own aroma. These are things no architect and no Board of Trustees can ever reproduce. Only the Old Timers know this and it is, perhaps, the core of their nostalgia.” Ironically, it is these “more efficient and solid successors” which today kindle feelings of nostalgia in us. This Hilltop — sculpted by nature and shaped with human hands — is an essential part of our identity. It is virtually impossible to imagine Pomfret School located anywhere else, looking like anything else. And yet, things change. The trick is to honor the past without becoming beholden to it. To keep breaking new ground.
