Cranbrook Schools is a private, PK–12 preparatory school located on a 319-acre (1.29 km²) campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The schools comprise a co-educational elementary school, a middle school with separate schools for boys and girls, and a co-educational high school with boarding facilities. Cranbrook Schools is part of the Cranbrook Educational Community (CEC), which includes the Cranbrook Institute of Science, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Cranbrook House and Gardens. (Nearby Christ Church Cranbrook remains outside this formal structure.) The Cranbrook community was established by publishing mogul George Booth, who bought the site of today's Cranbrook community in 1904. Cranbrook was designated a National Historic Landmark on June 29, 1989 for its significant architecture and design. It attracts tourists from around the world. Approximately 40 acres (160,000 m²) of Cranbrook Schools' campus are gardens.

As of 2006, Cranbrook Schools had an endowment of $191 million, among the 15 largest held by America's boarding schools.^[1] In addition, the Cranbrook Educational Community, of which the Schools is a member, has an endowment in excess of $300 million.^[2]

History of Cranbrook Schools[link]

The Quad in the Cranbrook Campus

In 1915, George and Ellen Booth opened a portion of their property to the general public with the construction of a small Greek Theatre. In 1918, the Booths built the Meeting House, which became the Bloomfield Hills School, opening for local children in 1922 (grades 1–12).

Subsequently the Booths decided to build a middle school and a college preparatory school. Cranbrook School for Boys was designed by world-renowned Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, completed in 1928. It began operations in 1927. The name "Cranbrook" was chosen since Cranbrook, England was the birthplace of George Booth's father. Kingswood School Cranbrook (for girls), also designed by Saarinen, opened in 1931. Cranbrook and Kingswood enrolled students from grades 7–12. The Bloomfield Hills School became an elementary school and was renamed Brookside School Cranbrook in 1930.

Unlike the Cranbrook School for Boys, which has several buildings, the Kingswood School has only one building, which includes supporting facilities. It houses dormitories, a dining hall, an auditorium, classrooms, lounge/common areas, a bowling alley, and a ballroom. The education at Kingswood School Cranbrook was initially primarily viewed as a "finishing school".

For the Booths and Saarinen, the conception and design of the Cranbrook and Kingswood schools, were greatly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which began in 19th-century England.^[3]

In 1923, Booth founded an Episcopal church to serve the nascent Cranbrook community, as well as surrounding communities. He chose the firm of Goodhue Associates to design the church. Groundbreaking took place in 1925, and Christ Church Cranbrook was consecrated on September 29, 1928.^[4] Originally Cranbrook and Kingswood schools were affiliated with the Episcopal Church, but they have since secularized. However, special occasions are still celebrated at Christ Church Cranbrook.

Cranbrook School, Kingswood School, and Brookside School operated separately until 1970, when it was decided to govern them together. This was followed by the creation of the Cranbrook Educational Community. In 1985, Cranbrook and Kingswood schools were merged to create a co-educational upper school institution.

The middle school did not become co-educational; it was divided into gender-specific campuses in 1984. The Community acquired Vaughan School to house the boys' middle school. The basement of Kingswood was at one point the girls' middle school. A new Middle School building opened in 2010. For boys and girls of grades 6–8, all classes are separate. The exceptions are those for the performing arts (Symphonic Band, Orchestra, and Choir). English, religion, and history classes are taught separately to boys and girls through the 10th grade.

Architecture critic Paul Goldberger of the New York Times called the Cranbrook campus "one of the greatest campuses ever created anywhere".^[5][6]

Cranbrook Schools today[link]

Christ Church Cranbrook (1925–1928), by architect Bertram Goodhue

In 1985, Cranbrook School and Kingswood School were merged to create a coeducational upper school, the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School. While the majority of the classes are coeducational, Conceptual Physics and 9th and 10th grade English and History classes are taught separately to gender for educational purposes. Classes are taught on both of the original Cranbrook and Kingswood campuses.

Frequently, the school is referred to as "CK" by its students, faculty, and alumni. Cranbrook Kingswood now lays claim to 70 athletic teams, which have recently won state championships in hockey, tennis, lacrosse, and golf. As of 2006, there are 763 students, approximately 1/3 of which are boarding students who live in single-sex residence halls.

A college preparatory school, Cranbrook Kingswood offers a comprehensive program that includes 15 Advanced Placement courses in its upper school. More than a 1/3 of AP Scholars in Michigan attend Cranbrook Kingswood. Despite the fairly extensive AP offerings, the school still restricts students to a maximum of 3 AP courses per school year. Its graduates often matriculate into Ivy League schools and other highly-regarded colleges and universities. Cranbrook Kingswood accepts slightly less than half of all applicants, placing it in the most selective 25% of preparatory schools in the United States.^[7]

Many of the interscholastic and extracurricular programs offered at Cranbrook have won awards and recognitions. The student newspaper "The Crane-Clarion" has been recognized by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the National Scholastic Press Association.^[8] In 2009, the Upper School's student literary arts magazine, "Gallimaufry", received a Gold Crown award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.^[9] The robotics and forensics team have also won several state awards.

Total enrollment at Cranbrook during 2007–08 was 1626, with 780 enrolled in the upper school, 333 in the middle schools, and 513 at the lower school Brookside. (Brookside's numbers include children enrolled in pre-kindergarten, junior kindergarten, and kindergarten at the Vlasic Early Childhood Center, which opened in 1996.)^[10] Approximately 11% of Cranbrook Kingswood's students are international students. Traditionally, Cranbrook School also has an exchange program with Cranbrook School, Kent, a boarding school in Cranbrook, Kent, England in honor of George Booth's heritage.

In spring 2009 the Cranbrook Educational Community announced that it had reached the 150 million dollar fundraising goal of its "Campaign for Cranbrook", which had been started in November 2006.^[11] Roughly $81 million of that money will go to the Cranbrook Schools.^[12]

Summer programs[link]

During the summer months Cranbrook Schools conducts a variety of day and boarding programs on their campus. These include day camps, a soccer clinic, a filmmaking seminar, a compensatory educational program for students from low-income families, a jazz ensemble, ice hockey, lacrosse, and tennis camps as well as the Summer Arts Institute and the Cranbrook Theater School. The actor Robert Englund taught one summer at the theater school.^[13]

Iconography[link]

The Archer, the symbol of Cranbrook school, is based on an episode in Book V (Latin) of the Aeneid, by Virgil, line 519:

...tamen aerias telum contendit in auras...

...he aimed an arrow high into the breezes of the air...

In an archery contest, a bird is tethered to a cord, and there are four archers. The first three in turn miss, then hit the bird, while the fourth, Acestes, instead shoots his arrow into the air, where it bursts into flames. For this miracle, Acestes is declared the victor.

The design was chosen by William Oliver Stevens, the first headmaster of Cranbrook School, who sketched it. The actual logo was designed by Eero Saarinen.^[14]

Traditions[link]

• Although Cranbrook School for Boys and Kingswood School Cranbrook merged in 1985 to become a single co-ed institution, the school reflects in many ways its history as separate, single-sex entities. Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School has two different hymns: The Cranbrook Song and the Kingswood Song, which are sung at many school events. Only the boys are invited to attend the Cranbrook Senior Pageant. Freshmen year Science, and Freshmen and Sophomore English and History are single-sex, and boys and girls have separate graduation ceremonies (although they do share in the same Baccalaureate service).
• Since 1971 sophomores have taken part in the Wilderness Expedition, a 10-day backpacking and wilderness camping trip in March that takes place in the Smoky Mountains along the North Carolina-Tennessee border
• Junior leadership ceremonies to celebrate the transition of the juniors to the senior class: A Junior Ring ceremony for girls and the Passage of Leadership ceremony for boys is held at Christ Church Cranbrook
• Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School maintains a relatively strict dress code: Jeans are not allowed and on Mondays (the so-called Formal Dress Day) boys have to wear a dress shirt with a tie and girls have to wear dresses or dressy tops with skirts.
• An opening of the school year convocation ceremony

Popular references[link]

• Paper Lion, George Plimpton's non-fiction account of his faux tryout as quarterback for the Detroit Lions in 1963 was set in large measure at Cranbrook (where the Lions trained from 1957 through 1974).^[15]
• Eminem's character, Rabbit, in the 2002 film 8 Mile mentions the Cranbrook Kingswood School in a rap battle with Papa Doc (portrayed by Anthony Mackie) when he questions Papa Doc's "gangsta" act because he attended Cranbrook.^[16]
• The Cranbrook School is also the model for the preparatory school portrayed in Edmund White´s controversial and classic autobiographical novel A Boy's Own Story.^[17]
• Lisa Birnbach makes note of Cranbrook in The Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World.

Notable alumni[link]

Cranbrook has many notable alumni, including designer Florence Knoll, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson, Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins, former Massachusetts governor and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, columnist Michael Kinsley, Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy, former professional soccer player Alexi Lalas, and actress Selma Blair.

Athletics[link]

Gallery[link]

• 

  Cranbrook Campus impression (3)

• 

  Dining Hall

• 

  Inside the Dining Hall

• 

  Natatorium

• 

  Hallway to Keppel Gymnasium

• 

  Kingswood School Building

• 

  Eponymously engraved archway

• 

  Dining Hall

See also[link]

• Cranbrook Educational Community
• Architecture of metropolitan Detroit

References[link]

Additional reading[link]

• Elizabeth C. Clark, Beside a Lake
• Bruce N. Coulter, Forty Years On
• Kathryn Bishop Eckert, The Campus Guide: Cranbrook
• Ben M. Snyder III, Once More With Joy

External links[link]

• Cranbrook Schools

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Edith Hamilton
Born	(1867-08-12)August 12, 1867 Dresden, Germany
Died	May 31, 1963(1963-05-31) (aged 95) Washington, DC
Occupation	Classical scholar, author
Nationality	German, American
Period	1930-1957
Subjects	Ancient Greece, Greek philosophy, Mythology

Edith Hamilton (August 12, 1867 – May 31, 1963) was a German-American educator and author who was "recognized as the greatest woman Classicist". She was sixty-two years old when The Greek Way, her first book, was published in 1930. It was instantly successful, and is the earliest expression of her belief in "the calm lucidity of the Greek mind" and "that the great thinkers of Athens were unsurpassed in their mastery of truth and enlightenment".^[1]

In 1957, when the Book-of-the-Month Club selected The Greek Way (1930) as a featured book, it enhanced her efforts at directing the American mind towards Ancient Greece, despite it having been published twenty-seven years earlier. Moreover, by then, she already had published other books, among them The Roman Way (1932), Mythology (1942), and The Echo of Greece (1957); to date, at the high school and university levels, Mythology remains the premier introductory text about its subject. The New York Times has described her as the Classical Scholar who "brought into clear and brilliant focus the Golden Age of Greek life and thought ... with Homeric power and simplicity in her style of writing".^[1]

Early life and education[link]

Childhood[link]

Edith Hamilton was born in Dresden, Germany, to Gertrude Pond Hamilton and Montgomery Hamilton, a scholarly man of leisure; she also had three sisters, Alice, Margaret, and Norah. Describing her Fort Wayne, Indiana, childhood, she said, "My father was well-to-do, but he wasn't interested in making money; he was interested in making people use their minds"; thus, her father guided her towards the Classics, and, when she was seven years old, he began teaching her Latin, then French, German, and Greek.^[1]

In the early 1880s, she attended Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies in Farmington, Connecticut, afterwards attending Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania. Upon earning her B.A. and M.A. degrees she won the Mary E. Garrett European Fellowship, which allowed her to continue her studies in Germany.^[2]

Studying in Germany[link]

In 1895 Edith and her sister Alice traveled to Germany to study humanities and classics at the University of Munich, recognized as a center in classical studies. At the time, most North American women chose to register as auditors and Edith and Alice were among the first women to audit classes. Their adventures in Germany have been well preserved and publicized in Alice's autobiography.^[3]:45-46

Leipzig

According to education historian Sandra Singer, "The sisters' first destination was the University of Leipzig. Edith had just graduated in classics from Bryn Mawr and was recipient of a European fellowship, while her sister Alice had recently completed her medical degree at the University of Michigan (1893)." ^[4] When they arrived in Leipzig, they found a fair number of foreign women studying at the university. They were told that they could attend lectures but would not be able to participate in discussions. Alice had come to Germany to continue her studies in pathology. Edith, however, had come to Germany to study classics, and attended the lectures.

According to Alice, Edith was extremely disappointed with the lectures she attended. The lectures were thorough, but lost sight of the beauty of literature by focusing on obscure grammatical points. "Instead of the grandeur and beauty of Aeschylus and Sophocles, it seemed that the important thing was their use of the second aorist," she said.^[3]

Munich

When the sisters discovered that women were still not allowed to earn a doctoral degree at Leipzig, they decided to try their luck at the University of Munich. As it turned out, notes Sandra Singer, "Munich was hardly much of an improvement over Leipzig for Edith. At first it was unclear whether Edith would be able to audit lectures at all ... [but] she was finally able to attend lectures, because there was tension within the classics department between the Protestants and the Catholics." The Protestants supported Edith and she was allowed to attend classes, albeit under trying conditions. According to Singer, "She had been told that a little alcove would be built in the lecture hall where she could sit behind a green curtain."^[4]

But as Alice writes in her autobiography, when Edith arrived, "she was forced instead to sit on a chair up on the platform beside the lecturer, facing the audience, so that nobody would be contaminated by contact with her." She remembered Edith saying, "The head of the University used to stare at me, then shake his head and say sadly to a colleague, 'There now, you see what's happened? We're right in the midst of the woman question.'" ^[3]

Career[link]

Educator[link]

Edith intended nonetheless to remain in Munich and earn a doctoral degree, but her plans changed. She was persuaded to return to the United States to take over as head of the recently opened Bryn Mawr Preparatory School for Girls in Baltimore. While she never completed her doctoral degree, she did become an "inspiring and respected head of the school for twenty six years."^[4]

Classical author[link]

"I came to the Greeks early," Hamilton told an interviewer when she was 91, "and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today."^[1]

Upon retiring, she moved to New York City and wrote and published various articles about Greek drama. Although she was long recognized as the greatest woman classicist, she was 62 when she published her first book, The Greek Way, in 1930. For 50 years before that her "love affair with Greece had smoldered without literary outlet".^[1]

Her approach to mythology was entirely through the literature of the classics, for she had not traveled to Greece and was not an archaeologist. The Greek Way drew informative comparisons between life in ancient Greece and current Greek life. The Roman Way (1932) provided similar contrasts between daily life in ancient Rome and the current life. Other works published over the next three decades led to her traveling to Greece in 1957 at the age of ninety.

But although her books were successful, she "nevertheless saw that it was hopeless to persuade Americans to be Greeks. In The Greek Way she conceded that life had become far too complex since the age of Pericles to recapture the simple directness of Greek life... the calm lucidity of the Greek mind, which convinced the great thinkers of Athens of their mastery of truth and enlightenment."^[1]

Edith Hamilton's correspondence and papers are at Princeton University. She is the subject of a memoir by Reid, Edith Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait.

Personal life[link]

Her sister Alice went on to become an integral part of Hull House in Chicago, which offered food, shelter, and education, as a charity on the part of wealthy donors and scholars who volunteered their time. She later became a noted "pioneer in industrial medicine and a professor at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School, where in 1919 she became Harvard's first woman professor.

Her younger sister Margaret also studied in Munich for one summer in 1899 with a close college and family friend, Clara Landsberg. Landsberg was from Rochester, New York, where her father was a Reform rabbi. After graduating from Bryn Mawr, Landsberg also became a part of Hull House and shared a room with Alice. She eventually left Hull House to teach Latin at the Bryn Mawr while Edith was headmistress. Alice considered Landsberg part of the Hamilton family: "I could not think of a life in which Clara did not have a great part, she has become part of my life almost as if she were one of us."^[3] Margaret later taught English at Bryn Mawr and took over as head of the school when Edith retired.

Recognition[link]

In 1950 she received the honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters from the University of Rochester and the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.^[5]

She considered the high point of her life to be a ceremony in Greece in 1957 when she stood in the theater of Herodes Atticus and King Paul of Greece awarded her the Golden Cross of the Order of Benefaction, making her an honorary citizen of Athens. Nodding to the applause of cabinet ministers, diplomats and Athenian intellectuals, "she walked to the microphone and in a firm voice cried, 'I am an Athenian citizen! I am an Athenian citizen! This is the proudest moment in all my life.'" She was one of the main founders of the Bryn Mawr School in Maryland ^[1]

Works[link]

• The Greek Way (1930)
• The Roman Way (1932)
• The Prophets of Israel (1936)
• Three Greek Plays (1937)
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942)
• The Great Age of Greek Literature (1943)
• Spokesmen for God (1949)
• Witness to the Truth: Christ and His Interpreters (1949)
• Echo of Greece (1957)
• Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, 1961, fifth printing 1969

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edith Hamilton

• Edith Hamilton Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.