<p>Haha yeah don’t worry about changing the topic. 'Cause this is pretty interesting too. :)</p>
<p>I have been to all campuses - I think that campuses of SPS and DA are equally better than PA and PEA’s. I really don’t like PEA’s though. Then again, MPICZ is biased in terms of SPS, :-).</p>
<p>Well if you had been here for awhile you would have seen that I thought that as soon as I visited, before I was accepted.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I would think the same thing also ;)</p>
<p>As to Hotchkiss, we did manage to find a gas station/shop for soft drinks and snacks in town. It’s a pretty but desolate town. To get to the town, it was such a long drive through local roads from the nearest Inter-state. We did the drive in summer, and the thought of my wife would have to drive there in snowy winter days was one of the reasons we crossed the school from our list for applications. We travelled from there to Deerfield later. DA is a few miles off I-91, so much easier to get to. What a contrast!</p>
<p>One of my very favorite campuses, and no I don’t have a connection there, is Avon Old Farms. It is completely isolated, but close to civilization if that makes sense. The campus was built to look like a 14th century Cotswold English village. It’s like something out of a story book. The big schools- Exeter, Andover, Choate, look like college campuses to me. Pretty in their own way, but closer to college than prep school. Choate reminds me of Middlebury for some reason.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Biohelpmom, regarding the college-like feel to Andover and Exeter (Choate too). For that reason they are way down on my list of most aesthetically pleasing SCHOOLS – not colleges!</p>
<p>Of those I’ve seen the top three would have to be St Paul’s, Taft and Avon. Oh, and Pomfret has the most beautiful gothic chapel I have seen this side of the Atlantic.</p>
<p>Eh – Avon Old Farms (and fif does have a dogg in this fight) always seemed a little phony to fif. Theodora Pope Riddle, who gave the property and helped in the design, was a little bit of a wack job. Considering the school was founded in 1926, and closed for several years during WWII, the attempt to make it look really old and British seems ummmm, strained.</p>
<p>fif,</p>
<p>I know nothing about the founders of AOF. </p>
<p>While it is true that the school’s design is pretentious – yet it was executed beautifully – the same may be said for any other school or college whose architecture is out of date with its founding year. The list would be quite long. Let see: St Paul’s, Yale, Princeton, Westminster, Boston College, Groton, Taft, Chicago – to mention just a few of the many whose campuses were wholly or partly built in the gothic style. Pretentious? – Yes!, but charming?! – absolutely!!</p>
<p>Colleges would be a separate topic, but looking at Yale and Princeton’s founding years their styles are not out of keeping with what has become known as “Collegiate Gothic”.
Most of those two schools original buildings are colonial in style. </p>
<p>A great example would be the University of Richmond, which relocated to its current csmpus in 1914, and created a stunning collection of Collegiate Gothic buildings.</p>
<p>Westminster is not Gothic at all, and Groton well, what would you expect. However, recreating a Cotswald style in the 1920’s, as AOF did, is pretentious, and not a little precious.</p>
<p>I cant wait to go tour Exeter if it looks like a college</p>
<p>fif,</p>
<p>True, I guess Westminster is more like half-timbered tudor than gothic, but still a style that is way past its time.</p>
<p>I am curious to know what fif means by “whack job” regarding Mrs. Riddle. And, what “dogg” do you have in that? (surely, not Snoop…). Also, do I detect a note of johnnie-come-lately directed at Avon? Is that why what it did for its campus is pretentious while what, for instance, Yale did for its is okay because it is, well, “old” (laughable when compared to the truly gothic universities of Europe)? As you may be aware, Yale went to great lengths to ensure its circa 1930 “gothic” buildings looked as old as could be by various methods of “distressing” the stone to get – voila, instant antiquity!</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I happen to admire the Yale campus, and marvel at the results they got, which are nothing if not impressive. Do you think they were trying to impress…maybe just a little? </p>
<p>It may have been all the rage, Collegiate Gothic that is, but for one like me who has lived years in Europe and been surrounded by gothic built in gothic times, I take it all with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>ANDOVER: In a really pretty town and it’s close to Boston.
EXETER: In a fairly small town but it’s definitely not in the middle of nowhere. It’s an hour away from Boston.
ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL: It’s in Concord, NH, the capital so it’s not the middle of nowhere.
DEERFIELD: Middle of nowhere. It’s 3 hours away from Boston.
HOTCHKISS: MIddle of nowhere. It’s a beautiful school, but there was NO cell phone service when I went there…
CHOATE: Near Yale… About 2-3 hours away from Boston and close to Manhattan.
LOOMIS: don’t know
GROTON: Very close to Boston, only 30-40 minutes away.
MILTON: Right next to Boston, it’s 10 minutes away. On the weekends, the kids can take the T (Boston trolley/train like thing) into town.</p>
<p>fif loves him some Snoop Dogg! Snoopy Snoop.</p>
<p>fif mis-spelled Ms. Riddles first name, it is Theodate. fif notes that she survived the attack on the Lusitania. Can’t find the references, but she was regarded as let’s say, eccentric.</p>
<p>fif went to a rival school, hence the disclaimer.</p>
<p>When Yale, Princeton and others greatly expanded their campuses and built (in Yale’s case) the residential colleges, they were modeled after the English universities. Of course there are many different styles on these campuses as well. What would you have had them build? Urts? Brutalist? Igloos? </p>
<p>fwiw, fif thinks Princeton did a better job than Yale.</p>
<p>fif thinks Avon is a little over the top, and a lot pretentious, right down to the gargoyles and the “winged beavers”. You disagree, but hey, that’s k k k kool.</p>
<p>Quite the contrary, I am delighted that various schools and colleges gave gothic architecture that most sincere form of flattery – imitation. And, as pretentious as it was, at least they were intelligent enough to know that the gothic style would long outlast any of the deplorable styles that were nascient in the 1920’s and 30’s.</p>
<p>I have set foot on Avon’s campus only once, but I can say that, judging by aesthetics alone I would choose it over all the othere schools I’ve seen, save, perhaps, St. Paul’s and Taft if I were a student applying to boarding schools.</p>
<p>Ha! My son and I were looking at Avon’s website just yesterday and he asked, “What the hell is that? Some kind of flying beaver???” It’s funny you should mention it. We joked that maybe they were flying monkeys, a la Wizard of Oz.</p>
<p>Deerfield is 1 hour and 58 minutes away from boston…just for the record haha =D I really love the Deerfield campus and the place is just georgous. Don’t know much about the other schools though!</p>
<p>fif earlier referred to “urts” when he meant Yurt. “Urt” is the sound one makes after eating a breakfast burrito.</p>
<p>Avon Old Farms’ mascot is the Winged Beaver, pronounced Wing-ed Beaver. Even that is a little cloying…</p>
<p>“Wing-ed”? Hmm, very Shakespearian. “…All are punish-ed, ALL ARE PUNISH-ED!” (Romeo and Juliet). ;)</p>
<p>Best campus:</p>
<h1>1 Taft</h1>
<h1>2 St Pauls</h1>
<h1>3 Deerfield</h1>