The History of St. George’s School for Girls Chicago (population: 2.8 million) is located on the shores of Lake Michigan, and is the third largest city in the United States. Various interstate, state, & US highways travel thru the “Windy City” along with several railroad carriers. O’Hare International Airport is one of the busiest terminals in the world, and handles a great deal of air traffic on a daily basis. The Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers still provide an outlet for water traffic if chosen by those wish to travel by that mode. “The City of Big Shoulders” was founded in 1803 as Fort Dearborn, then grew slowly until it was recognized as a city in 1837. Although it may have suffered a setback in 1871 to the Great Chicago Fire, the city pulled itself up by its own bootstraps to rebuild, gaining many immigrants from various European countries and hosted the Columbian Exposition in 1893. By then, Chicago had grown even more to the point that it became the fastest growing city in the US during the second half of the 19th Century. St. George School for Girls was opened in 1918 by its founder, George Williams. The school’s purpose was to educate at the elementary level and do so by having a facility that embraced the heritage of the Hyde Park neighborhood. The school expanded to a high school division and eventually took in boarders around World War II, when about 300 students lived on campus. St. George was initially located at 910 Lawerance Avenue on the city’s North Side, but moved in 1921 to 4545 Drexel because of increased enrollment. The high school opened at that time, but it became too large to handle and returned to an elementary school in 1938, according to the archives of the Hyde Park Herald. In 1934, Anne Tyskling arrived at the school as a teacher, and assumed the director’s role two years later to guide the future of the school. After closing the high school down and getting thru World War II, St. George went thru a period of consternation which included having to move the school, financial crisis, and the threat of closing the school. Mrs. Tyskling did what she could to keep the school open, including having to move to the Rodfei Zedek Temple on East 54th Place. Another hallmark moment that St. George endured was in 1952 when the school was threatened with eviction due to admitting a Hindu child into the school. For those who lived around the school, the child was thought to be African-American as the city of Chicago was experiencing an influx of people from the southern part of the United States, and since the school was located in a neighborhood where the neighbors objected nor cared, St. George rose above the situation by becoming a model to other schools in how they accepted all children, regardless of their race, creed, and color. The school survived the issues and relocated again to 4810 Ellis in a building that was purchased by Tyskling, then grew to 145 students within a matter of years, at which time St. George and Harvard School for Boys began talks to merge their schools together. The Board of Directors for St. George agreed to buy Harvard School and bring together students from K-12 in an intergrated setting, completing its mission in time for the 1962-63 school year |
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