page_title: Pomfret School
section_title: Historical notes
hierarchical_section_title: Pomfret School / Historical notes
caption_attribution_description: English: The 13th century rose window from St. Julien Cathedral, France, installed in Clark Memorial Chapel, Pomfret Schoo, Pomfret, Connecticut, USA
context_page_description: Pomfret School is an independent, coeducational, college preparatory boarding and day school in Pomfret, Connecticut, United States, serving 360 students in grades 9 through 12 and post-graduates.
  Located in the Pomfret Street Historic District, a 45-minute drive west from Boston, the average class size is 11 students with a student-teacher ratio of 6:1. Over 80% of faculty hold master's or doctorate degrees. Typically, 40% of students receive financial aid or support from over 60 endowed scholarship funds, 9% are students of color, 17% are international students.
  Pomfret is ranked in the top 20 of similarly sized U.S. boarding schools, in the top 50 of all U.S. boarding schools, and has been recognized as one of the "Most Beautiful Boarding Schools Around the World." The 2008 film Afterschool by Antonio Campos was filmed on Pomfret's campus.
  Opened October 3, 1894 by Founder William E. Peck and his wife Harriet Jones Peck, who designed the school's coat of arms, Pomfret's graduates have distinguished themselves in sports, government, the arts, sciences, business, and public service as philanthropists and activists.
context_section_description: Pomfret's coat of arms
  Designed by Harriet Peck Jones, wife of founder and first Headmaster William E. Peck, Pomfret's Coat of Arms is derived from that of the Lords of Pontefract Castle in the town of Pomfret in West Yorkshire, England. In Elizabethan times, the castle and the surrounding medieval market town of Pontefract were referred to as "Pomfret". England's King Richard II died in the castle, by starvation or murder, and the castle has a significant role William Shakespeare's plays The Life and Death of King Richard the Second, V.i, V.iii, and the penultimate scene V.v which is set entirely in Pomfret Castle; and The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, II.iv, III.i, III.ii, III.iii, all set in Pomfret Castle, and V.iii.
  Pomfret's 13th century stained glass windows
  Pomfret's Clark memorial chapel contains fine stained glass windows known to have been created by American firms Heaton, Butler & Bayne; Connick Associates, and Nicola D’Ascenzo for the chapel, completed in 1908. However, the ten-foot-high rose window above the chapel doorway and two of the arched-top, oblong windows along the walls are apparently from the 13th century cathedral, Saint Julien of Tours, on the Loire river in France. Research indicates these three extraordinary windows were removed from St. Julien during one of its many expansions. The arch tops on the two oblong windows were added at a later date to match the others in the chapel. The ancient windows were donated to Pomfret in 1947 in memory of John Grant Fitch ‘42, an alumnus killed in 1945 in Germany during World War II. They are recorded as having been imported to the U.S. in 1904 and offered to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, but were declined due to the extensive restoration needed. They were subsequently auctioned by the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York to an anonymous bidder, restored by Reynolds, Francis & Rohnstock of Boston, and installed in Clark Chapel in 1949.
  Ernest Flagg's architecture for Pomfret
  In the first decade of the 1900s, Pomfret was transformed from a collection of "vernacular buildings—most were Colonial Revival frame structures adapted to school use—to a planned institution. The building campaign was financed principally by two patrons: Edward Walker Clark, one of three sons of the Singer [Manufacturing Company] heir, Alfred Corning Clark, and Frederick G. Bourne," then president of that company. By 1906, Flagg had designed a master plan, using the casual relationship among the original buildings and their New England town green style arrangement as his guide for a formal institutional complex. "Flagg’s master plan reinforced the enduring colonial image of the New England village green." The design set a School Building as anchor for a series of semidetached pavilion style dormitories with a connecting open arcade. The Chapel was appropriately located to be visible from the main road, while the gymnasium and infirmary were arranged along the slope of the hill that led to the playing fields. The pavilion arrangement reflected the influence of Thomas Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia. "The dynamic focus of the scheme was the arcade. It acted as a spine and artery, linking the dormitories together while providing covered access to classrooms in the School Building, a Jeffersonian concept that distinguishes both Monticello and UVA. Regrettably, the architectural virtues of the arcade were abandoned in favor of practicality, and in 1957, it was walled-in during dormitory remodeling."
  "The School Building with its belfry and white appliqué ornament, similar to the Colonial Revival structures of the former campus, as well as the dormitories and infirmary, maintained a domestic scale and architectural character." For the Chapel, commissioned by Edward Clark in 1907 as a memorial to his son George Newhall Clark (1885–1906), a Pomfret alumnus who died while attending Harvard University, Flagg chose Norman architecture as an appropriate model and emulated the rich textures of the unpolished stone-work characteristic of that style.
  Following a visit 
caption: The 13th century rose window from St. Julien Cathedral, France, Clark Memorial Chapel
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