Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School - History

History

William Greenleaf Eliot, founder and chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, established predecessor institutions to MICDS in the 1850s as part of the university. A boys' school, Smith Academy, was founded in 1854, and was later attended by Eliot's grandson, the future poet T. S. Eliot. A sister school for girls, Mary Institute, was founded in 1859 and was named for Eliot's late daughter Mary Rhodes Eliot, who had died at the young age of 17. In its early years, Mary Institute was located at three different locations in the City of St. Louis, the third of which was at the corner of Lake and Waterman, in the building that is now New City School.

Smith Academy closed in June 1917, in part due to the proliferation of private elementary schools and public secondary schools in the area. Three months later, St. Louis Country Day School opened in northwestern St. Louis County. Inspired by the "Country Day School movement" nationally, it was not related to Smith, although first year enrollment included a number of former Smith students. St. Louis Country Day School's campus was in a bucolic setting reached by electric streetcar, far removed from the noise and grit of the city.

Mary Institute moved to its Ladue campus in 1931 and became independent of Washington University in 1949. By the 1950s, the tranquility of the Country Day campus was disrupted by the growth of the adjacent Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport. St. Louis Country Day School relocated to a new campus next to Mary Institute in Ladue in 1958, and eventually sold its old campus to the airport. Eliot's grandson, Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, who attended Mary Institute's kindergarten and Smith Academy, spoke at Mary Institute's centennial in 1959.

Although various connections, including theatrical cooperation, had existed between Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School for years, academic coordination between Mary Institute and Country Day began during the 1970s and culminated in the 1992 merger of the schools. St. Louis Country Day headmaster John Johnson, who coordinated the merger, became head of the combined schools.

Today, 100% of MICDS graduates attend four-year colleges and universities. With assistance from the school's four-year College Counseling program, MICDS graduates annually achieve admittance into many of the country's most selective universities and college programs.

The school observed its sesquicentennial during a year-long celebration that ran from May 11, 2009 through May 11, 2010.