Latin School of Chicago

Background: The River View Roundup. the school in 1945, after Miss Singleton's retirement. She wrote in the Alumnae Bulletin of 1953: "Since my first year I have felt that the schools must work closely together to serve the community better – the whole community of families who want a high standard of college preparation for their boys and girls." The Class of 1953 was not only the first coeducational graduating class the school produced, it was also the first class to experience one yearbook (the first-ever Roman), one Parents Council, one Alumni Association; one faculty; and combined activities in music, dramatics and school government. Advisory groups and classes in health and in physical education continued to be separate. In the fall of 1953, Sallie Eichengreen Gratch was in her senior year at Latin. She had started at the girls school in second grade. "I only knew studying with girls and being taught by women," Gratch said in an interview for the 1992 Alumni Bulletin. The only man in the building in the Scott Street school had been the engineer, Charles." (Charles Ray later became the shop teacher and did not retire until 1975.) Her newly coed senior class provided Sally and her classmates with their first opportunity to de-mystify boys. "What I least expected to happen, did," Gratch said. "I developed a really strong group of male friends." Being in the Dearborn Street school building was also more relaxed, in a positive sense. "The girls school was very strict," said Gratch. "Every day when we were dismissed, we had to file past the headmistress, shake her hand and curtsy." The curtsy reflex was so ingrained, Gratch often found herself curtsying to other adults out of habit. The students at GLS also had a much stricter dress code than the boys.They were required to wear uniforms of "regulation navy blue dress" that consisted of a navy blue tailored skirt, a white blouse and white socks. A navy blue cardigan sweater or school blazer was optional, and no jewelry other than a wristwatch and identification bracelet was allowed. The boys, on the other hand, were able to wear any "tailored shorts or trousers and inconspicuous sport shirts (grades 1-6), shirts, ties, jackets or sweaters." When the three top grades were combined that fall, many of the more restrictive characteristics particular to the girls school were left behind at 59 E. Scott. It was also the first time most of the students from the girls school had male teachers, many of whom had teaching styles wholly different from that A new student government constitution was written when the schools merged. "The school did not change as much for us boys because the new school used the boys' headmaster, the boys' school colors, the boys' team name, Romans. They took things the boys were more familiar with. …But for the boys one thing that changed was that the studies got harder. The Girls Latin School had a tougher curriculum. They took French in sixth grade, for example, and the boys didn't start until seventh. So there was a lot of evening out of the two curriculums. My older sister was in seventh grade when the schools joined. She and her classmates were better educated. They had already had French and they had had better mathematics. It wasn't really a matter of faculty; it was a matter of curriculum." — Bruce Baker '62 quoted in The Latin School of Chicago Centennial Book. LATI N SCHOOL OF CHI CA GO 53

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