The Choir School
The Choir School ([C. on Plan]) has a special interest for everyone who goes to the Cathedral, for here are educated and trained the boys who sing in the Cathedral services. The school was founded by Bishop H. C. Potter in 1901 and was formerly located in the Old Synod House. The present building, erected in 1912 and built of the same kind of stone as the Bishop’s House and Deanery, is in the English Collegiate Gothic style of architecture; is three stories high, and has extreme outside dimensions of 83 by 150 feet. Messrs. Walter Cook and Winthrop A. Welch were the architects. The building contains offices, a general school room which is equipped with apparatus for both stereopticon and moving pictures, a choir rehearsal room with stalls, individual rooms for vocal and instrumental practice, a fine large common room with open fire-place for reading and social intercourse, dining room, kitchen, dormitories, a big gymnasium, a sick room to which a boy is transferred upon the first sign of any illness, etc. Accommodations are provided for 40 resident scholars and 20 day scholars. Their musical training is under the personal direction of the organist and Master of the Choristers, and their general education under the direction of the Head Master and staff of under-masters. A sympathetic House Mother looks out for the personal wants of the boys and directs the domestic service; and competent physicians and trained nurses are in attendance when necessary. Boys are admitted to the school at the age of 9 and remain until their voices change, which is usually between the ages of 13 and 14. They come from all parts of the United States and possessions, two boys recently having come from Alaska. An applicant is first received on probation, and if he manifests a good character and disposition, and gives promise of a good voice, he is accepted as a chorister. Until they become full choristers, vested with cassock and cotta, probationers sit in separate choir stalls in the Cathedral services and wear only their black student gowns. During their residence at the school, the boys are under strict but gentle discipline and have the finest education and musical training that can be given them. Their board, education and musical training are free, in return for which they give their services as choristers. When they leave the school, they are followed by the interest of the Cathedral organizations which endeavor to secure scholarships for their higher education. The men of the choir, of whom there are about 20, do not reside at the Choir School. The usual number of choristers, men and boys, in the Cathedral services is about 60, except during the summer vacation when the number is somewhat reduced. There is probably no finer choir school in the world, and the Cathedral music is the highest expression of this form of musical art in this country.
THE DEANERY
THE CHOIR SCHOOL
The Choir School building, which cost nearly $180,000, is the gift of Mrs. J. Jarrett Blodgett in memory of her father Mr. John Hinman Sherwood. At Eastertide, 1914, the late Commodore Frederick G. Bourne, who had sung as a boy in Trinity Church and in later years in the Church of the Incarnation, endowed the school with $500,000; and by his will, probated March 15, 1919, gave $100,000 to the Cathedral toward the building of the Nave and about the same amount to the Choir School endowment. Members of the Diocesan Auxiliary to the Cathedral contributed generously toward the furnishing of the school. A tablet in the porch reads:
“In Faithful Memory of ‖ John Hinman Sherwood ‖ Just Upright True ‖ Erected by his daughter ‖ 1912.”