
Rogers Hall School was a college preparatory
finishing school
A finishing school focuses on teaching young women social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society. The name reflects the fact that it follows ordinary school and is intended to complete a young woman's ...
for girls with day and boarding students in
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, United States. Alongside Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, it is one of two traditional county seat, seats of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in ...
.
Roger's Hall School was founded by Emily and Elizabeth Rogers, who inherited the main building in 1880.
Emily, who had been taught by
Mary Lyon
Mary Mason Lyon (; February 28, 1797 – March 5, 1849) was an American pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, (now Wheaton College) in 1834. She then established Mount Holyoke Fem ...
at
Miss Grant's Girls' School for two years, came up with the idea of donating the school's property donated their family's property for the school.
Though the sisters had planned on donating the land upon their deaths, and Elizabeth persisted in this vision after Emily's 1884 death of pneumonia. Elizabeth decided to donate it in 1892, after meeting E.P. Underhill, who had opened a girls' school in Belvedere.
Elizabeth proposed that Underhill be the principal for the school, and she agreed, remaining at the school for 18 years.
After Elizabeth's death, her estate of about $130,000 was left to Rogers Hall
The school sat on about five acres of the over two-hundred acres the sisters had inherited. In 1892, the school opened with 11 faculty, 41 residential students, and nine day students. The school expected the students to follow the strict Christian ideals that the Rogers sisters had led. This included a strict schedule, with nightly checks of students' stockings for straightness, evaluations of table manners, and lights out by 9:30.
The school was made of four buildings. Rogers Hall, the original school building, later housed boarders. Other boarders stayed at Rogers House, a Victorian mansion near the other buildings. The school also included Rogers Cottage. Finally, the Gymnasium was famous for being the first gymnasium in a private girls' secondary school in the country to have a pool. The pool was built in 1922.
The school's literary magazine was known as Splinters.
The school had its peak enrollment in the 1955, with over 100 students. By the 1970s, though, enrollment had fallen to just 47 students, and the school closed its doors in 1973.
The property is now an apartment complex for seniors and people with disabilities.
The school archives are in the collection of the
University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Alumni
*
Blanche Ames Ames
Blanche Ames Ames (February 18, 1878 – March 2, 1969) was an American artist, political activist, inventor, writer, and prominent supporter of women's suffrage and birth control.
Personal life
Born Blanche Ames in Lowell, Massachusetts, Am ...
[Summary, Ames Family Papers, 1812-2008](_blank)
Sophia Smith Collection, Five College Archives and Manuscript Collections.
*
Starr Faithfull (dropped out shortly before graduation)
*
Edith Nourse Rogers
Edith Rogers (née Nourse; March 19, 1881 – September 10, 1960) was an American social welfare Volunteering, volunteer and politician who served as a Republican in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress fro ...
*
Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional poetry, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book ''Live or Die (book ...
*
Rebecca Tobey
Notable People
*
Frederic T. Greenhalge, trustee
*
Frederick Lawton, trustee
References
External links
Lowell’s Rogers Hall School for Girlsfrom the Lowell Historical Society
Defunct schools in Massachusetts
Finishing schools
Defunct girls' schools in the United States
Education in Lowell, Massachusetts
Schools in Lowell, Massachusetts
Educational institutions disestablished in 1973
1973 disestablishments in Massachusetts
1922 establishments in Massachusetts
Educational institutions established in 1922
{{Women-hist-stub