Mission & History

The Loomis Institute was chartered in 1874 by five siblings who had lost all their children and selflessly determined to found a school as a gift to the children of others. Since its opening in 1914, the school has offered educational opportunities for students regardless of gender, religious or political beliefs, national origin, or financial resources. Our students welcome the challenges of Loomis Chaffee's academic program, embrace opportunities to explore and pursue individual academic, athletics, artistic, and personal interests, and thrive in a community where their peers and faculty share a commitment to the best self and the common good.
 

The Founding

The founding of The Loomis Institute is a story of vision, generosity, and purpose springing from tragedy. Colonel James Loomis and Abigail Sherwood Chaffee, both of Windsor, married in 1805. By the early 1870s, their five remaining children — Osbert, James, John, Hezekiah, and Abigail — had experienced both the successes and the sadness of life. They had made their fortunes in the world, traveled, married, and had children, but all of the children in all five families had died before reaching the age of 21. Their grief found expression through an extraordinary act of trust and selfless generosity in the founding of a school for “all persons of the age of twelve years and upwards to twenty.” In July of 1874, freshly scribed Connecticut charter in hand, the direct descendants of Mr. Joseph Loomis could pursue in earnest their quest to commemorate and fulfill the promise of their deceased children by educating future generations. Forty years later in 1914, the school opened its doors to 39 boys and 13 girls.

Since its inception, the school has adhered to and honored its Founders’ wishes: to foster a lifelong zeal for learning through a rigorous and diverse curriculum and to instill an abiding respect for others predicated on the egalitarian notion that neither religion, sex, geographical origin, nor financial standing will preclude a student from enrolling in the school.
 

Our First Century

Through its first twelve years, the school educated both boys and girls, but in 1926 the girls moved to the historic Windsor center and the new campus of The Chaffee School to enable the faculty to focus on girls’ educational issues. For more than four decades, both schools enjoyed considerable success, even adhering to the Founders’ aspiration to remain tuition-free as long as the seed endowment allowed them to do so. In 1970, social and pedagogical opportunities reunited the two schools on the Island campus and a few years later to the formation of The Loomis Chaffee School. Capitalizing on the larger and coeducational student body, the school initiated significant curricular revisions by augmenting its already demanding core requirements with a broad range of electives in art, music, philosophy, religion, and physical education.

Weathering the societal tumult and economic stagnancy of the 1970s, the school realized significant growth from the mid-1980s to today, enjoying a seven-fold growth in its endowment; a similarly exponential growth in the amount of financial aid awarded each year; an expansion of the faculty, now approximately 180 in number; and a doubling of the physical plant through the addition of several new dormitories, a visual arts center, a music center, a center for theater and dance, an admission building, and an athletics center.