Misses Grants Seminary for Young Ladies / Grant's Collegiate Institute

 1878-1898

The progressive Misses' Grant's Seminary for Young Ladies was the first school in Chicago to recognize the importance of preparing girls for college. It offered education programs at the kindergarten, primary, intermediate and collegiate levels – and students who completed the school’s college preparatory course received a certificate of entrance to Smith, Wellesley or Vassar Colleges. “The best families of Chicago sent their daughters there.”[1] The school was started in 1869 but moved to the Newberry Mansion building after its first home burned in the Chicago Fire of 1871 and it outgrew its second location.

The new building was considered to be a great advantage to the school. “The North Side takes a good deal of pride in the handsome and elegantly furnished new buildings of the Misses Grants’ Seminary” [2]. One article even said that the “elegant school building” along with its genteel neighborhood “exert a marked influence in the development of character and refinement of its pupils.”[3] The school catalog boasted views of Washington Square Park and the lake, before its shores were expanded farther east in the 1920s-1940s.

The school had a significant role in Chicago’s social life. Newspaper articles describe brilliant receptions attended by hundreds of people mingling in the large parlors and crowding the libraries and reception rooms, with music filling the air from orchestras and bountiful refreshments. One article extolled “one of the pleasantest gatherings of the season” given by the Misses Grants in the building where “the spacious parlors, reception and school-rooms make the place admirable for a large gathering…the unusual number of pretty misses and handsome young ladies, finely dressed, and full of joyous spirits, gave the company a more than usually animated appearance.” [4]

When Principal Barbara Grant died in 1883, her funeral took place in the building. An article in the Chicago Tribune described the event, stating that “the parlors were filled during the service by some of the most refined and culture residents of the city.” Students carried floral tributes and hand bouquets of lilies of the valley and 49 carriages carried the mourners to the graveyard [5]. It’s fascinating to imagine Dearborn lined with carriages, and well-dressed women walking with their arms nestled in the crook of a companion’s elbow, skirts rustling on the sidewalk. Her sister Elizabeth lived another decade, dying in 1893.

Around 1888, the school was renamed “Grant’s Collegiate Institute,” with Miss Mary A Mineah and her sister as principals. The school maintained its excellent reputation. In 1894, the President of Vassar visited, and 500 invitations were issued for a reception to meet him. 

The last mention of the school we’ve found is in the Chicago Tribune on April 18, 1898, advertising the sale of all contents of the school, including “seven fine upright pianos, 100 school desks, parlor and bedroom furniture, good hair mattresses and feather pillows, good carpets, dining room and kitchen outfit, general household effects.” [6] 

The building was destined for the next of its many lives.

[1] Chicago Tribune, 20 Feb 1949, Page 74

[2] The Inter Ocean, 27 Nov 1879, Page 9 

[3] Chicago Tribune, 4 Sep 1886, Page 8

[4] The Inter Ocean, 31 Jan 1880, Page 3

[5] Chicago Tribune, 30 May 1883

[6] Chicago Tribune, 17 Apr 1898, Page 16