Celebrating 100 Years on Broad Cove Campus

By Guy "Woody" Tunnicliffe

Head of School Dr. Colleen Ramsden used the Derby annual spring event, held on May 4 this year, as a preview of the community celebrations planned for the upcoming centenary of Derby’s present campus. Held in the Hersey Memorial Gymnasium, fittingly the first permanent structure built on the campus, as the reveling guests enjoyed food and drink, more than one person had a question about the event theme, Spring Bash on Broad Cove—where exactly is Broad Cove? Indeed, “Derby Academy” and “Broad Cove” have become so inexorably linked that, much like “New Derby” is rendered redundant in relation to “Old Derby,” so too has “Broad Cove.”

More familiar to some, is the campus’s former use as the summer campground of Boston’s socially elite First Corps of Cadets. The 30-acre tract, which included the 10-acres of graded fields of the parade ground, formed one side of the tidal Broad Cove, whose wetlands and calm was preserved thanks to the construction of the causeway that is today the section of Route 3A which separates the cove from Hingham Harbor. On the opposite side of the cove was Otis Hill, named after none other than Madam Sarah Derby’s maternal great-grandfather, John Otis, a founding father of the town of Hingham—though in Madam Sarah Derby’s time it may still have been known as Weary-All Hill, for it’s steep climb wearied by all who made it. A century later, cadets used those same steep, grassy slopes across the cove for artillery practice. In July 1921, the First Corps of Cadets was reorganized as part of the Massachusetts National Guard, where it survives today as the 211th Military Police Battalion. As a result of this reorganization, the former campground on Broad Cove became available for purchase the following year.

The story of Derby Academy of the early 20th century parallels that of the First Corps of Cadets: a cherished institution, rich in history and tradition, yet struggling to find its identity in the contemporary world. The looming mass of Old Derby that belonged firmly to the 18th century was barely surviving in the 20th, with the total school size staying steadily around 30 pupils each year, with an overall average age of seven or eight, and only one or two students per year completing the full academic course load to receive a high school equivalent diploma—the last of which was received in 1911. Once again, Madam Sarah Derby would soon save the school in spirit.

The year 1914 marked the 200th anniversary of Madam Sarah Derby’s birth, and former Governor John D. Long, President of the Board of Trustees of Derby Academy, took the opportunity to use the celebration to host Derby’s first reunion. More than 300 former students from around the country came back for the festivities and Annual Exhibition, a precursor to our Arts Night showcase of student work, that in the days before cinema often filled both Loring Hall as well as Old Derby. Interest drew in not just former alumni, but the community as well, enough so that in the fall of 1914, enrollment had more than doubled from the previous spring to 72 students. 1914 also marked the arrival of Mrs. Marita Burdett, who for the first time in the school’s history, placed students in specific grades, then Grades 2 through 7. In just a few short years, Derby’s enrollment was at an all-time high, with over 100 students by 1922. As Old Derby was now filling with students, Hingham Square was now becoming congested with automobiles. The automobile-era preceded the infrastructure that could support it, and Hingham, already a large bustling Yankee town, found that it had become a waystop on the scenic route from Boston to Cape Cod.

It is worth taking a moment to note that in the background of this myopic tale, the educational community at that time was in a pitched battle between educational conservatives and fundamentalists and educational progressives and reformers. The “Academy” model, the privately-endowed schoolhouse, belonged firmly to the conservatives; the progressives were already advocating a new model of education, the “Country Day School.” The Country Day School Movement in the United States essentially sought to recreate the atmosphere and culture of independent boarding schools, by building campuses in the “country,” or suburbs, and expanding programs to include not just academics, but the whole student, athletics, play, expanded facilities and clubs, exploration, freedom, etc. It is no surprise then that rather than take sides in a fractious external debate, Derby would decide to do both.

When those 30 waterfront acres with graded playing fields and a mess hall, sheltered from the hustle and bustle of downtown Hingham, and only a 10-minute walk from Old Derby, became available for purchase, the Trustees leapt at the chance to acquire it, working quickly to stymy a proposed subdivision development. The Broad Cove purchase was the first time since Sarah Derby’s original gift that funds from other individuals were subscribed to Derby Academy. That same year, John French, a former Milton Academy master, was appointed to be the head of the new upper campus. French was a protégé of the former Harvard University President, Charles W. Eliot, also a trustee of Derby Academy, and member of the Progressive Education Association, which credits its legacy with “any other activities beyond reading, writing, arithmetics, and the classics” in schools—although in Derby’s case, sewing should be added to that list.

The move to the new campus was effectively a second founding of the school, and a pamphlet published at the end of the 1923–1924 school year described it thus:

A Complete School

Derby as now organized comprises a Kindergarten, a complete Elementary School, and for the academic year of 1924-25, two High School classes. In succeeding years additional classes will be established until complete college preparation is offered.

The Kindergarten and Primary classes have a short school day. All older pupils remain for a full afternoon session, with regular supervised outdoor play. For those who live a substantial distance from campus, noon-time meal is served. Boys and girls work and play on equal terms in all departments of the school.

A Progressive School

Methods of instruction and discipline at Derby, will be such as are advocated by the recognized leaders of modern educational thought. Without sacrifice of that which has value in the old, the school is committed to the policy of utilizing that which proves serviceable in the rapidly developing new education.

In the shaping of this progressive policy, the headmaster is assisted by an Advisory Board including the headmasters of two prominent nearby schools and the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Learning by Living

Believing that experience is in all things the most effective teacher, and that the best preparation for life consists in living, Derby endeavors to provide for its pupils a school life so vitally interesting and so purposeful that they think of school as the congenial center of their active life, rather than as something artificial and far removed from life.

Photographs from the time reveal a true idyll, rolling grassy hills down to the shore of Broad Cove, where theatrical productions used the slope of Otis Hill as a backdrop, before the construction of Route 3A, long lines for picnic luncheons, and skating on Broad Cove.

This idyll quickly came with hardship at the onset of the Depression. While most struggled in some way during this period of financial hardship, Derby particularly suffered from the optimistic bonds that had been sold to finance the purchase of the new campus, compounded by dropping enrollments, nonexistent yields on investment, and obligations to vendors. To keep students in school, Derby allowed families to pay whatever they were able to, the modest faculty salaries were cut by a further 20%, and did what they could to keep the school afloat. Students did what they could too, as the school could only afford one maintenance worker during those years, students assisted in cleaning their classrooms and shoveling snow in the winter. To aid in this endeavor, the Parents Association, now Derby Family Connect was formed, and through clothing sales, bake sales, book sales, sponsored lectures, and teas, Derby families came together to ensure there was “just enough money” to meet every critical need.  

The School has a history of banding together during crises and demonstrating a particular compassion and sensible endeavor that is no doubt central to its longevity. In World War II, Derby opened its doors to British evacuee children and over a dozen of its own students would enlist before its conclusion; today’s current generation will be remembered for their deft response to the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a hybrid learning environment and going to extraordinary efforts to keep the community together; and you see it in the myriad groups, causes, petitions, collections, and donation bins, that Derby students cannot sit idly by when others are in need.

Those same qualities that have allowed the Derby community to survive crises, have helped it otherwise thrive. In preparation for moving the Upper School to the new campus in the fall of 1923, a number of Hodgson prefabricated buildings were erected to serve as classrooms and a dining hall. These structures, designed to stand for roughly a decade, were meant to be a temporary solution to ensure that the campus would be open in time for the fall 1923 term, but the effects of the Depression, World War II, and good old-fashioned Yankee penury, they were still in use when Edward C. McEachron was appointed headmaster in 1947. Headmaster McEachron not only led the construction of the aforementioned Hersey Memorial Gymnasium in 1949 and Sarah Derby Hall (based on plans that McEachron drew himself), but also in the summer of 1960 when the remaining Hodgson buildings were razed and rapidly replaced with new purpose-built classrooms and a dining hall. Thus being the most extensive building program in the school’s history since the construction of Old Derby, to be followed six years later by the construction of the Primary and Lower School building.

The transfer of the Primary and Lower School to Broad Cove and the subsequent sale of Old Derby to the Hingham Historical Society in 1966 reunited the whole school, fundamentally shifting the Derby experience. Students no longer had to endure a “New Derby”—one foot in the current century at “New Derby” while the other remained at “Old Derby,” firmly planted in the previous. And while so much of Derby has progressed from that century-old idyll, as we gather today as a community for performances in Larson Hall, at recess on the 1784 Field, in line at the dining hall for lunch, or for a rousing Field Day tug-of-war overlooking Broad Cove, we are reminded of that ambitious sentiment, “to provide for its pupils a school life so vitally interesting and so purposeful that they think of school as the congenial center of their active life,” and still is ours today.