The Dalton School history

The Gryphon: Fall/Winter 1920

Larger facilities soon became necessary; the Lower School was moved to West 72nd Street, and the High School opened in the autumn of 1929 in the current building at 108 East 89th Street.

Eleanor Roosevelt admired the work of Helen Parkhurst and played an important role in expanding the population and resources of the school by promoting a merger between the Todhunter School for girls (founded by Winifred Todhunter) and Dalton in 1939.

In 1942 Parkhurst was forced to resign due to financial irregularities.

The school’s student newspaper reported in September 1974 that he was starting that year as a math and physics teacher.

He came to Dalton in 1975 after a career as a public school administrator in a number of affluent suburban school districts–the first head to come from the public sector, rather than from the independent school world, or in Barr's case, the university.

The next year, he participated in a school musical for parents and faculty, and he appeared in later editions of the paper as the coach of the Dalton Tigers math team until the beginning of 1976.

“It was weird,” said another former student, Paul Grossman, a 1978 graduate who did not attend the party but remembered hearing about it. “Everyone talked about it,” he said.

By the time Dunnan resigned amid financial and personal problems in 1997, the Dalton School had become a traditional, elite college preparatory school with only vestiges of its Progressive past.

After four years of uninspired leadership, in which certain members of the board of trustees filled the leadership vacuum, Ellen Stein, a former Dalton student, became head in 2001.

Semel, Susan F. 2002. "Helen Parkhurst." In Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era, ed.

Marymount Magazine Winter 2015