| Windsor Mountain School | |
|---|---|
 Boston University Tanglewood Institute | |
| Location | |
 | |
| Information | |
| Type | private secondary school |
| Established | 1944 |
| Closed | 1975 |
| Headmaster | Max Bondy (1944-1951), Heinz Bondy (1951-1975) |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrollment | 250 |
The Windsor Mountain School was a private, co-ed boarding school for grades 9 through 12 located in Lenox, Massachusetts.
The school was established in Lenox in 1944 by German Jewish educational reformer Max Bondy and his wife Gertrud Bondy. [1] [2] The Bondys had earlier established an international school in Germany, initially in Gandersheim and later in Marienau. [3] [4] When the rise of Nazism threatened their enterprise, they left Germany, re-establishing their school in Switzerland in 1937. [3] In 1939, they moved to the United States, reopening their school in Windsor, Vermont, and then later in Manchester, Vermont at the site of the Wilburton Inn, before moving it to Massachusetts. [5] Shortly after art collector Grenville Lindall Winthrop's death in 1943, they purchased Groton Place, his Carrère and Hastings-designed mansion in Lenox and opened their new school. [6]
In 1951, after Max Bondy's death, his son Heinz succeeded him as headmaster. [7] Heinz Bondy led the school for 25 years until it closed in 1975. [8]
Operated according to progressive education principles, the school was unusually democratic in its governance, with a student government that was empowered to make all nonacademic rules. As of 1970, there was no dress code, student publications were not censored, and there were no restrictions on student political activities. The school's philosophy held that the exercise of freedom would help students become responsible, self-directing people. [7]
Among the prominent Americans who sent their children to Windsor Mountain School in the 1960s were musicians Harry Belafonte, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston, [9] civil rights lawyer Clifford Durr and his wife, activist Virginia Foster Durr. [10] and Judge George W. Crockett Jr. [11]
As of 1970, Windsor Mountain had about 250 students, including about 40 African Americans. [7]
Educator Hans Maeder, who was later to establish and lead the Stockbridge School, taught at Windsor Mountain School for a year in the 1940s. Poet Gerald Hausman taught at Windsor Mountain School from 1969 to 1976. [12]
Eric "Rick" Goeld, who attended Windsor Mountain from 1961 to 1963, recently published "People of Windsor Mountain," which is a history of the school spanning the years 1920 to 1975. The book includes many remembrances and personal stories of alumni and former faculty.
There is also another recently published book By Roselle Kline Chartock, a retired professor of education from nearby Great Barrington, titled Windsor Mountain School A Beloved Berkshire Institution. This book is centered on Windsor, referencing several other private schools of the era in the Berkshires, which focused on progressive education.
The school closed in 1975. [13] The original Groton Place mansion now belongs to Boston University's summer Tanglewood Institute for gifted young musicians, and during the rest of the year is used by the Berkshire Country Day School. [6]
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Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the Tanglewood Music Center, Days in the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Besides classical music, Tanglewood hosts the Festival of Contemporary Music, jazz and popular artists, concerts, and frequent appearances by James Taylor, John Williams, and the Boston Pops.
The Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) is a summer music training program for students age 10 to 20 in Lenox, Massachusetts, under the auspices of the Boston University College of Fine Arts.
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Virginia Foster Durr was an American civil rights activist and lobbyist. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1903 to Dr. Sterling Foster, an Alabama Presbyterian minister, and Ann Patterson Foster. At 22 she married lawyer Clifford Durr, with whom she had 5 children, one of whom died in infancy. Durr was a close friend of Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt, and was sister-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who sat on many crucial civil rights cases. Her circle of friends extended to Alger Hiss. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2006.
Lenox School was a private preparatory school for boys in grades nine through twelve in Lenox, Massachusetts. The school was affiliated with the Episcopal Church.
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Williams High School was a public high school located in the town of Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Its history evolved from the town's earliest schools founded before and shortly after the American Revolutionary War. Students from Stockbridge, its small villages of Interlaken, Glendale and Larrywaug, and from the nearby town of West Stockbridge attended Williams High School. In April 1968 the school closed, when its students transferred to a new regional high school located in the town of Great Barrington.
Grenville Lindall Winthrop (1864-1943) was an American lawyer and art collector from New York City. A direct descendant of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he restored historic buildings in Lenox, Massachusetts and assembled a large art collection in his Upper East Side townhouse. He bequeathed his entire art collection to the Fogg Art Museum of his alma mater, Harvard University.
Judge George William Crockett III served on the Detroit Recorder's Court from 1976 until 2003. He was known for presiding over the 1993 Malice Green case, and for his father, George Crockett, Jr., an influential civil rights activist, congressman and judge who preceded and served with him on the Recorder's Court.
