EDUCATION: Death of Miss Chapin

From a house on Manhattan’s East 49th Street last week went news which joined Abby Rockefeller Milton; Gladys Vanderbilt, Countess Szechenyi; Anna Roosevelt Dall; Antoinette Heckscher. Lady Esher; Mary Van Rensselaer Cogswell Thayer; Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst and many another rich & famed socialite in common sorrow. Dead at 70 lay the awesome ruler of each one’s girlhood, Miss Chapin, founder and longtime headmistress of Manhattan’s smartest school for girls.

As befitted her destiny, Maria Bowen Chapin was well born, daughter of a Wickford, R. I. manufacturer. Behind her were a grandfather and great-grandfather who had been Governors of the State. Educated in private schools in Providence, Maria Chapin went to New York in the ’90s, began to teach small groups of her friends’ children. In 1901, with seven teachers and some 75 pupils, she founded Miss Chapin’s School on West 47th Street.

This year, housed in a five-story Georgian building on fashionable East End Avenue, Miss Chapin’s school has 45 teachers, 380 students aged 6 to 18. Though in 1932 she relinquished her position as headmistress to her partner and housemate since 1911, Mary Cecilia Fairfax, sister of the 12th Baron Fairfax, Miss Chapin’s ideas and personality have continued to dominate the school almost as strongly as ever. Even her passion for historic dates is still gratified. Beginning at 2,000 B.C., Chapin girls march down the centuries by memorizing some five dates each week. Almost the only outward change which recent years have brought is that, with chauffeurs less plentiful, more girls walk to Park Avenue for the free bus service Miss Chapin established to carry them to & from school.

Though she kept her scholastic standards high, tall, energetic, forceful Miss Chapin was equally intent on giving her future social leaders character and poise. To that end she kept a hawklike watch over their lives, both in & out of school, developing an organization and discipline rivalling West Point’s. Each Chapin girl wears a uniform, light or dark green depending on her age. Student proctors note and punish such lapses from decorum as running on the stairs. Each day begins with prayer, hymns, the chorus-recitation of a Bible verse by the whole school. Banned on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are parties, theatres, the opera.

No smart girls’ school has ever embraced Progressive Education but Miss Chapin kept up with the times in such things as student government and athletics.

Of late more & more Chapin girls are preparing for college, chiefly Vassar and Bryn Mawr, but most still take a general course. Here daughters and wives of Morgans, Rockefellers, Pratts, Flaglers, Vanderbilts and Cabots have learned to invest and handle trust funds, budget and manage three households and platoons of servants.