Latin School of Chicago

Background: The fieldhouse. The brand new school included "seventeen well-lighted classrooms, a large study hall at the top of the building, a fully equipped gymnasium, three squash racquet courts as well as a workshop." It boasted natural light, cheerful colors, modern desks, and a lunchroom." — 1933 Chicago Latin School for Boys brochure Preliminary architectural study for the Dearborn school. 36 L AT I N M AGAZINE Under their leadership, the school took out a $500,000 bond to acquire the land at 1531 N. Dearborn (the location of today's lower school) and begin construction on a new building. The school also embarked on its first major fundraising campaign to support completion of the project. When the next headmaster, George Norton Northrop, arrived in Chicago in the autumn of 1926, the building was still in mid-construction. "I found the fine new schoolhouse on North Dearborn Parkway still in the hands of the carpenters, plasterers, and painters," wrote Northrop in later years. "The first meeting of the trustees was held in the open air on the pavement in the shadow of the Georgian facade. We decided to convoke the school on the day set, and then send the boys home for a week or two until the building was habitable. All that autumn and early winter lessons were recited to the nerve-wracking accompaniment of the hammer and the saw, a sort of preliminary training for the pernicious radio accompaniment to study so prevalent among the more neurotic striplings of our day. We inhaled quantities of turpentine and hardened ourselves in draughts and an atmosphere redolent of damp plaster." The brand new school included "seventeen well-lighted classrooms, a large study hall at the top of the building, a fully equipped gymnasium, three squash racquet courts as well as a workshop." It boasted natural light, cheerful colors, modern desks and a lunchroom. "Workshops and a music room, and laboratories on the upper floors enable the boys to obtain relaxation by the building of radios and other handwork and by interesting themselves in the arts." Northrop, who had been headmaster at the Brearly School in New York for six years, brought with him a clear vision for moving Chicago Latin School forward, and during his tenure Latin's academic reputation grew. According to the 1933 school brochure, "The course of study [at Latin School] is designed, primarily to rouse the boys' intellectual curiosity, to lead them to think for themselves, and to formulate their own Headmaster George Norton Northrop

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