Poke Inn, a building known variously as Poq Inn or the White House, was used as a faculty residence or dormitory between 1916 and the early 1940s. Located about a mile from the Loomis campus, it housed between seven and 12 boys during years when enrollment outpaced available beds in the quadrangle dorms. The winter 1943 Loomis Bulletin announced the school’s sale of Poke Inn and recounted memories of the close bonds formed by students living there. The article noted “one more Loomis landmark in Windsor has disappeared” but omitted mention of the two years when the building fulfilled the outcome of a landmark ruling by the Connecticut Supreme Court. Referred to during those years as “Poq Inn,” it housed the reopened Loomis Girls Division from 1925 to 1927. 

The Loomis Institute acquired the building, located at the corner of Poquonock Avenue and Spring Street, through the estate of Hezekiah Bradley Loomis, one of the five school Founders. He had, in the 1860s, inherited half of the so-called “Flat Lot” just to the north of Windsor center from his parents, James and Abigail Chaffee Loomis. Hezekiah, his estate, and, later, the school’s Trustees retained the land and its three dwellings as rental properties until 1916. A hand-drawn map, accounts listing rent payments, and local water bills from this earlier period refer to Poke Inn as “the White House.” In 1916, U.B. Mather, one of Loomis’ first math teachers, moved there with his family. It was transformed into a dormitory in the early 1920s. 

The original Loomis Girls Division opened in 1914 and held classes for day students at the west end of the William H. Loomis Refectory on the Island campus. The Trustees voted in March 1923 to suspend the girls’ classes because of “languish[ing]” enrollment. The town of Windsor fought the decision in court. State Attorney General Andrew Healy argued before the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1924 for an injunction on the closing, but he failed to persuade the court that the Loomis Institute had an obligation to provide an education for girls. Healy waged a vigorous appeal the next year. Assisting him was Andrew Storrs Campbell, a well-respected Hartford lawyer, and Hugh Alcorn, a brilliant and aggressive state’s attorney. Their appeal asked the court to look more closely at language used by the Loomis Founders in their wills and in the 1874 Loomis Institute Charter, including the phrase “education for all persons.” The final ruling of May 1925 determined the wording used throughout the documents validated “the construction of ‘all persons’ to include those of both sexes” and that “the charter plainly requires the trustees to furnish to girls the educational benefits of the Institute.” 

With planning and renovations done hastily over the summer of 1925, Poq Inn was repurposed into classrooms for the fall opening of a day school that aligned with the court’s ruling. Three Loomis faculty agreed to teach at Poq Inn, and Katherine Ahern, a member of the original Girls Division faculty, was rehired as preceptress. Applications were accepted only from those who would be first-year students; previous students could not reapply. An additional class would be added over the next three years to make a full, four-year school. Eleven students entered that fall. 

In 1927, the Loomis Girls Division moved to a group of buildings on Windsor’s Palisado Green and was renamed The Chaffee School. U.B. Mather’s two daughters, Clara Louise and Edith, graduated from Chaffee in 1936 and 1937. Hugh Alcorn’s granddaughters, Carolyn and Elizabeth, graduated in 1947 and 1950. Celia Storrs Campbell, a student at the Girls Division from 1921 to 1923 and daughter of attorney Andrew Storrs Campbell, received her Loomis diploma in 1987. John Ratté, who was then Head of School at Loomis Chaffee, awarded diplomas to six women whose Loomis educations had ended abruptly with the closing of the Girls Division. They had been deemed too far along in their high school studies to rejoin Loomis at Poq Inn. Celia returned to the Island 64 years later for her belated graduation.