October is National Archives Month and in celebration we held an SPS Archives Scavenger Hunt! Participants were given sixteen places and objects to find, all of which can be seen everyday at SPS but are often overlooked. We then hosted the fall term Archives Talk, at which our archivist explained what these objects tell us about SPS history. The Scavenger Hunt trophy was awarded to the team of Josie Chen ’28, Alice Qi ’28, and Alexandra Cao ’28.
Curious? Click HERE for the Scavenger Hunt answer key and then check out a few of the objects/places and their histories below!
Lizard on a Rock was created by Adrian Smith ’93 for his Sixth Form ISP. He carved it in place, imitating Michaelangelo’s method of “liberating the figure imprisoned within the stone”. In a 2017 interview with the Alumni Horae, he talked about his pride in creating such an iconic piece of art at SPS. He said, “One of the things that has always attracted me to stone carving is the enduring legacy of it.”
On the rocks near the dam behind Friedman rests our resident heron, Hank. There are mentions in The Pelican of the “heron near the dam” and “the heron returning” going back fifty years, to the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The dam goes back to when this area was called Millville. The oldest mill, which was located where Friedman stands today, was built in the 1730’s. The mill business began to decline in the 1840’s. Their mortgages were sold off, a part of which was bought by George Cheyne Shattuck, father of SPS founder. He transferred that deed to his son in 1847, and the property became the home of St. Paul’s School in 1856. The mill at the dam was kept running by Woodbury Flanders until 1878.
This bronze fountain, created by Herbert Lewis Kammerer, was given to the School in memory of Frank Pardee, Jr., Form of 1911. Dedicated during Anniversary Weekend 1960, it was placed in a rock near the new Exercise Building, on the path to the Lower Grounds. The Exercise Building was the school’s third gymnasium, which was built in 1958 and located on the same spot as today’s AFC. The fountain was preserved when the AFC was built.
The initials of the School’s founder, George Cheyne Shattuck, Jr. can be found on the front door of the Old Chapel. The chapel was a gift from Shattuck and the first major act of construction for the new school. August Heckscher wrote in his history of St. Paul’s School: “The building of the chapel was an act of faith, visible affirmation that the little school intended to endure and to grow.”
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