After almost 90 years in downtown Troy, the Emma Willard School moved out to Mount Ida, thanks to a $1 million gift from one of its graduates, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, also known as Mrs. Russell Sage. After two years of construction, the new campus opened in 1910 with stunning examples of what was called “English collegiate Gothic” architecture. “The buildings are all of fireproof construction, the exterior walls being of gray stone with Indiana limestone trimmings, green slate roofs and red tile ventilators. From an architectural point of view the buildings are most beautiful with numerous gables and bays, paneled windows, buttressed wails and rich stone carvings, including a notable series of gargoyles along the roof lines.” The work of M.F. Cummings and Son, architects, is as distinctive today as it was then; if you haven’t seen the campus in person, you may well recognize it as the setting, ironically, of a boys’ school in the film “Scent of a Woman.”
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