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St. Paul's School (New Hampshire)

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This is about the St. Paul's in the United States. There is also a St Paul's School (UK).

St. Paul's School

Seal of St. Paul's

Interim Headmaster Bill Matthews
Established 1856
School type Private
Religious affiliation Episcopal
Location Concord, NH, USA
Enrollment Apx. 530
Faculty ~100
Campus Rural
Mascot Pelican
School colors Red (Main), White

St. Paul's School is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, United States, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was founded in 1856 by Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck, Jr. The 2,000 acre (8 km²) New Hampshire campus currently serves around 530 students. The school became co-educational in 1971 and is one of only a handful of remaining 100% residential boarding schools in the U.S., and one of the only ones whose entire faculty resides on campus. St. Paul's attracts students from all over the United States and the world. Though the school is nominally a religious institution, the faiths represented in the student body include nearly every religion as well as nonbelievers.


Millville

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Students play frisbee on the Chapel lawn on a warm spring day.

The school's buccolic 2000-acre campus is familiarly known as "Millville", after a now-abandoned mill whose relic still stands in the woods near the Lower School Pond. Though the campus is located a few miles from the center of Concord, a small city, the campus feels secluded and rural. Few members of the outside world regularly venture onto campus save for non-Faculty employees of the school, and so the community becomes virtually a world unto itself.

Though the school owns 2000 acres, the overwhelmiing majority of this acrage is comprised of wild and wooded areas. Most of the buildings are relatively close to one another.

There are 18 dorms, nine boys' and nine girls', all of which are single-sex and house between 25 and 40 students apiece. The arcitecture of the dormitories varies from the gothic, collegiate style of the "Quad" dorms to the spare, modern Kittredge building. The newest dorm, palatial Kehaya, was constructed in 1992, and its donor stipulated that it be forever a girls' dormitory, presumably to prevent boisterous high school boys from defacing the dorm's stately rooms.

Classes are held in six buildings: language and humanities classes meet in the Schoolhouse; math classes, in Moore; science classes, in Payson; visual arts, in Hargate; music and ballet classes, in the Oates Performing Arts Center; and theatre classes, in the New Space blackbox theatre. The Schoolhouse, Moore and Payson form a quadrangle.

The Ohrstrom library, constructed in 1991 to the tune of several million dollars, houses some 70,000 books and overlooks the Lower School Pond. Across the pond from the library, students sunbathe and swim off of "the Boat Docks," so called because they were once used for crew.

Perhaps the focal point of the campus is the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul, also known as the New Chapel. Constructed in the late 19th century, the Chapel is designed in the style of a gothic cathedral, and was the first instance of this design in America.

Daily Life

Like many private schools in its area, St. Paul's operates on a six-day school week, meaning that classes meet on Saturday. Wednesdays and Saturdays, however, are half-days, with athletic games in the afternoons. Days packed with activity are both exhausting and engaging, a fact perhaps best summed up by the aphorism that "the days drag on and the weeks fly by."

For Paulies, as St. Paul's students (and, incidentally, alumni) are called, most school days begin with Chapel. This mandatory interfaith half-hour meeting occurs four times a week (every school day except Wednesday and Saturday.) Four rows of bench seating face in on either side of a center aisle, instead of forward, with Third Formers (Freshmen) sitting in the front rows of each side, Fourth and Fifth Formers in the second row, Sixth Formers in the third, and finally, Faculty members in the last row. Chapel begins with a reading. Each reading is sourced from fonts of wisdom as varied as Scripture, Lance Armstrong's autobiography, the Bhagavad Gita, and the poetry of e.e. cummings. Following the reading is either a speaker or a presentation. Speakers can be alumni, Faculty members, Sixth Formers, luminaries brought to the community, or community religious leaders, and others. Presentations are usually musical performances by students, and can be jazz, classical, a capella, or even (occasionally) rock and roll. The headmaster then says prayers, including a prayer for any community members whose birthday it is. Chapel is concluded by "reports and announcements," which include general scheduling reminders, announcements of disciplinary action, and student events like movie screenings or club meetings. Students often perform short skits during Reports to plug their events.

After Chapel, a full day of classes await students. St. Paul's conducts all its classes (with the exception of science and some math classes) in a round-table format – known as the "Harkness method" – encouraging discussion between students and the teacher, and between students. Students learn not only from a world-class faculty, but from each other, and are engaged and included in each classes. The average class size, according to the School's website, is 10-12 students. Each class meets four times a week for fifty-five minutes. For humanities, science and arts classes, one class a week runs an additional thirty minutes.

Rather than offering a Physical Education class, St. Paul's requires all its students to play sports for all six terms of their Third and Fourth Form years, and for any three terms during their Fifth and Sixth Form years. These sports range from a world-champion crew team (more on that later) to club hockey, an intramural sport designed to acquaint even non-skaters with the game of ice hockey. See the [St. Paul's School website page on athletics offerings] for a complete list of sports offered.

Traditions

The school is known for its many longstanding traditions. For example, near the start of the school year—on a sunny, crisp Fall day—the Rector announces an unplanned "Cricket Holiday" in morning Chapel. Classes are cancelled for the day and the students participate in a variety of fun activities, plus rest and relaxation. The Cricket Holiday dates back to the first Rector, Henry Augustus Coit, who preferred cricket over baseball as a "more refined sport." Students who participate in "club" sports (intramural) at St. Paul's are assigned to one of three teams for their entire school careers—"Isthmian," "Delphian" or "Old Hundred." Student also are assigned to one of two "Boat Clubs""—Halcyon or Shattuck. The rivalry of the clubs has lasted for more than a century. If a graduate's descendent attends the school, he or she is assigned to the same clubs.

St. Paul's students once had a close relationship with the Grateful Dead and other jam bands. Several Grateful Dead histories make note of the pyramid dialect that was born at the school. Phish played in the Upper (the School's dining hall) on May 19, 1990.

Massachussets Representative Barney Frank taught at St. Paul's School in the early 60's.


Athletic Firsts

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Students Playing Hockey Beneath the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul

The first ice hockey game ever played in the United States was played at St. Paul's School. The hockey program has enjoyed a long history with several notable alumni, including Hobey Baker and Malcom Gordon. America’s first racquets and squash courts were built at St. Paul’s in 1883. (The American sport of racquetball is a fusion of handball and the British game of squash). These first courts were the birthplace of squash tennis.

Another first came for St. Paul's School in 2004 when its crew team won the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup in the Henley Royal Regatta, beating Winchester College, St Paul's School (UK), Pangbourne College and Abingdon School.

Notable alumni

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