It’s the name that catches your eye. Stamped across the once-gleaming tin surface, the incised “LOOMIS SCHOOL” announced to customers that cream from the school’s dairy herd had arrived. Delivered by the school’s milk truck to local creameries, faculty and nearby residences, and the Loomis and Chaffee school kitchens, this cream can and dozens like it, were essential to the school’s agricultural curriculum and farm production. This object and other surviving sources evoke Loomis’ vibrant, progressive dairy venture between 1914 and 1962. Keeping pace with the American dairy industry at that time meant striving for herd genetics that produced increasingly more butter fat in milk. The award-winning Loomis cows did just that, filling more and more metal cream cans each year through the first half century of the school’s history. 

The original dairy barn, located on the site of the current Ratté Quadrangle, was designed in 1914 by the school’s architects, Murphy and Dana. It included many special use areas, including one for milk processing and a pouring room adjacent to the stanchions where cows were milked. The Loomis Log declared in January of 1927 that “a new and thoroughly modern milk house” had been constructed next to the barn. A gift of Gerard Swope, president of General Electric and father of David Swope ’25 and John Swope ’26, the idea originated with David, who had studied in the agriculture program and, directly after Loomis, worked in Irvine, California, as a ranch hand and later in Chicago as a shop hand in the McCormick Works of the International Harvester Company. While in Chicago, he lived at Jane Addams’s Hull House and taught manual training there. 

Moving milk processing out of the barn meant more room for calves, heifers, and milking cows; space for a new classroom in the milk house; and the most up-to-date facility for cooling, separating, pouring, and bottling milk and cream from the herd’s 50 cows. In 1927, The Hartford Courant reported these cows produced an average of 350 quarts of milk a day; the school alone used 275 quarts every day and made ice cream, butter, and other dairy products using the farm’s milk and cream. Production increased over time: In 1939, 40 milking cows produced over 600 quarts a day, and in 1951, 56 milking cows supplied 900 quarts — 1,800 pounds of milk — a day. Fourteen-year old Daleormsby Martha, perhaps the most heralded milk cow to live at Loomis, joined an elite bovine group in 1962. Honored by the Holstein-Friesian Association of America, she surpassed the lifetime production mark of 160,000 pounds of milk. Her career butterfat total to date was an impressive 5,670 pounds. 

In 1927, The Hartford Courant reported these cows produced an average of 350 quarts of milk a day; the school alone used 275 quarts every day and made ice cream, butter, and other dairy products using the farm’s milk and cream.

The 24 foot-by-30 foot, two-room, wooden-frame milk house was a study in temperature contrasts, all for the purposes of preventing and killing bacteria in milk. Ice water tanks and a built-in refrigerator cooled raw milk brought directly from the barn. After cooling, it was put through a cream separator four times and cream skimmed off and stored in metal cans while milk was bottled for households or put into larger tin milk cans for the school’s kitchen. Both were stored in ice water or refrigerated before delivery. Washing and sterilizing bottles, cans, strainers, and other objects used in processing required intense heat. Steam pipes lining the milk house’s sterilizing room maintained a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit. Around 1938, the school purchased a pasteurizer used to heat milk to kill bacteria before bottling. 

Headmaster Nathaniel Batchelder shared his excitement for the new milk house in his January 28, 1927, letter to The Log. “There has been an immediate improvement in the quality of our milk. … At the same time, we have improved the milk in richness by introducing some Guernsey cows into our Holstein herd.” The herd manager had recently asked Evelyn Longman Batchelder, Mr. B’s spouse, “to name the first two Guernsey pure-bred heifers born here. Between us we hit upon the idea of taking the names of famous women sculptors,” and the two calves were named after Bessie Potter and Anna Hyatt, the only two women sculptors “besides Mrs. Batchelder who have been honored by full membership in the National Academy of Design.” Batchelder closed his letter, “We hope that the progress of art and the progress of agriculture, as represented in our dairy herd, will be equally steady and distinguished.”

Progressive ideas could be found in the agriculture curriculum, which focused on current trends in research-based food animal and vegetable production. Using this knowledge, students in the program designed their milk house classroom. The Log described this as “a testing laboratory, efficiently equipped with all the necessary apparatus for thoroughly testing milk and milk products such as a steam centrifuge, [a] moisture test for butter,” and a Babcock milk tester used to determine the fat content and quality of the milk. Every student who was enrolled in this curriculum did a major project with the dairy herd during his senior year. The formal study in agriculture was phased out in 1930. For about 15 more years, students could earn diploma credits and prepare for college study with projects undertaken on the school farm. In 1962, the full herd of 130 registered pure-bred Holsteins — the then preferred breed of dairy cow — was dispersed at auction, the farm closed, and the buildings razed. 

This chapter of school history can be pieced together from the architectural plans for the original dairy barn, photographs, newspaper articles and other accounts of the farm, herd records, this cream can, a Loomis milk bottle, and even the weathervane that perched atop the main barn; these are all preserved in the Loomis Chaffee Archives. A closer look at the cream can in the school’s collection reveals another name stamped into each of the handles: “FOLLANSBEE.” Manufactured by the Pittsburgh-based Follansbee Brothers Company in its West Virginia factories, cream cans were just one object in the company’s galvanized tin dairy wares line. Founded by William U. Follansbee and his brother Benjamin in 1894, with their two brothers joining later, the company had a long and successful family ownership until its sale in 1954. William served as president and chairman of the company’s board and is the grandfather of Nat Follansbee, associate head of school for external relations. Nat’s upcoming retirement concludes his own long and successful run of more than 40 years at Loomis Chaffee. There’s no doubt, the names Loomis and Follansbee go well together.