St. Mark's School (Massachusetts) - Facilities

Facilities

St. Mark’s has changed much in appearance since its founding. In school founder Joseph Burnett's time the school in its entirety was made up of one structure—a square, two-story house painted yellow with green blinds. That building and others from those early days, including a large schoolroom and dormitory wing built in 1866–1867, were gradually demolished during the Thayer period in the 1890s, to make way for the brick and Tudor-styled structures that now comprise the school’s 250-acre (1.0 km2) campus. Notable in the Thayer vision was the cloister-style construction of the school, with interconnected buildings forming an architectural ensemble in which the entire school, alone among elite American boarding schools, was essentially under one roof, in many cases with dorms on the upper floors of the buildings and classrooms and other academic halls in the lower floors. The school as it appeared in the early 1950s is portrayed under the name "St. Bart's" in the novel Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, whose son Dmitri attended the school.

Thayer's coherent architectural vision of Gothic academia has survived to this day, and St. Mark's main campus structure has remained remarkably well-preserved. The school itself touts the "school under one roof" concept as a unique strength. It is certainly unusual. With the exception of St. Paul's School, the other St. Grottlesex schools and schools in the Independent School League built their campuses in architectural styles that mimicked the architectural vernacular and English colonial references of the Harvard University campus and the early New England academies.

St. Mark's late twentieth and early twenty-first century construction of an athletic center, a dormitory and a large performing arts center have led to some of the campus structures no longer being under a single roof.

How this close, cohesive architectural environment impacts student relations has not been formally studied. Sadly, during the construction of the performing arts center, another beloved facility—the fives courts mentioned by Nabokov—were razed. This effectively ceded to Groton School, the only other school in the independent school league with fives courts, the permanent title of North American Fives Champions. The reconstruction of the courts is currently part of the school's master plan which is being financed by alumni and present St. Mark's parent; Daniel Howell.

Some interior shots of St. Mark's can be seen in the film School Ties (1992), which was filmed at Middlesex School and St. Mark's. Originally, the director wanted to use St. Mark's picturesque Tudor buildings as the primary film site; however, he was unable to get a permit from the local police station that would allow him to close off the street for filming. Thus he decided to use Middlesex School for exterior shots.