Cornwall Academy

Cornwall Academy was a non-sectarian college preparatory school for boys located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts among the Berkshire Hills of western New England. Its founder was John Geddes Moran, an intellectual and compassionate man who acted as Headmaster for the life of the institution. Moran was much beloved by students and staff alike^{[citation needed]}. His passion for education provided an atmosphere on the campus where avant-garde and experimental teaching techniques were fostered. The school focused on improving the academic achievement of its students though a disciplined environment including classes six days a week and obligatory supervised study periods in the evenings. Many of Cornwall’s faculty had attended Dartmouth College and among the more memorable was John Gardner Chamberlain, the Deputy Headmaster who also taught history. William Stevenson,^{[disambiguation needed ]} who taught English at Cornwall in the 1960s, went on to be the Headmaster of Litchfield Academy in Connecticut.

Cornwall Academy’s curriculum served boys from the first to sixth form (7th through 12th grade) with an additional “post-graduate” year offered if required. The student body itself never exceeded more than 100 boys at any given time. The school colors were burgundy and white and despite its small size Cornwall was not without sporting successes in the local private prep school leagues. The campus was outside of the town of Great Barrington and lay along a tributary of the Housatonic known as the Green River. The Headmaster’s historic residence, Moran House, had one of the few remaining hanging staircases in Massachusetts. Another colonial era structure on campus, the Saint Onge Guest House, was used as accommodation for visitors to the school. It is said to have been the place where the historian William Manchester wrote much of his book The Death of a President. The campus of Cornwall Academy was once described in Town & Country magazine as one of the most beautiful in New England. The institution lasted from the late 1950s until it was forced to close due to financial difficulties in the early 1980s. Graduates are known to have succeeded in fields ranging from the arts to business and the professions.

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