Rosemary Hall in swank Greenwich, Conn, is a collection of Gothic-Roman- esque-Italianate buildings which are predominantly pink stucco chiefly because pink is a favorite color of Rosemary's breezy, strong-minded old Headmistress Caroline Ruutz-Rees (pronounced R'Treece). The "Boarders" and the "Day Boarders" wear wool or tweed uniforms in winter and gingham ones in spring tailored to Headmistress Ruutz-Rees's exact specifications. All regard her with a loyalty that makes Rosemary Hall notable among girls' schools not so much for its fashionableness and its stiff scholastic standards as for the fact that it perfectly reflects the imperious personality of its headmistress. Last week Miss Ruutz-Rees, still going strong at 71, took it into her head to retire. Characteristic was her method. She directed her alumnae association to buy the school from her, and immediately her Rosemarians began laying plans to do so.
The price ($309,000) set for the school was characteristically precise, for nothing about Rosemary Hall has ever been too small to escape Founder Ruutz-Rees's attention. She was a blue-eyed, ambitious young Englishwoman of 23 when she founded the school in Wallingford, Conn, in 1890. It was named after Judge William Gardner Choate's nearby Rosemary Farm (now the site of Choate School for boys). Ten years after she moved it to Greenwich in 1900 began her association with another Englishwoman, small Mary Elizabeth Lowndes, who last week remained as co-headmistress. The first Greenwich plant burned in 1923, an event commemorated in innumerable subsequent fire drills. Altogether Rosemary has educated some 1,800 girls from prosperous families, including Mrs. Robert Alphonso Taft of Cincinnati, Mrs. S. Parker Gilbert, Jacob Gould Schurman's daughter Barbara Rose, Thomas Alexander MelIon's daughter Elizabeth and Lady Thornton, youthful relict of the president of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
Rosemary girls are divided into a lower school with 126 pupils, an upper school with 102. They work so hard at Latin under Miss Ruutz-Rees and English under Miss Lowndes that when they get to Smith or Vassar it is often with a sigh of relief. "Ten bar girls," who have served ten terms in the student government, are Duces, and the girl voted outstanding in each graduating class is an Optima. Both Optimae and Duces have their names carved in oak panels in the dining hall. Girls are subject to constant British roll calls to which they answer their last name. For exercise Rosemarians play hockey, ride with Miss Lowndes, whose inveterate sidesaddle horsewomanship is reputedly attested by a platinum rib, or go for "bounds" (rapid walks).
Rosemary discipline is strict. One girl was expelled for smuggling in and eating a five-pound box of chocolates. Another ate a single grape after hours and wrote a conscience-stricken note to Miss Ruutz-Rees, thereby losing permission to attend her Rosemary Feast that year.