Ogontz School, Photo Album, 1893-1894.

Ogontz School, Photo Album, 1893-1894. Mary Louise's Curtis's school photo album, landscape folio-format book containing twenty-four large photos (school buildings interiors, exteriors, dramatic productions, graduating students and faculty), thirty-two smaller square-format photos with circular image area depicting candid shots of students, three large photos of the campus mounted on mat boards; and a program from the Ogontz's "Scenes from Shakespeare" program from 1894; sizes and formats vary; [together with] a collection of early 20th century art landscapes photography, many of glaciers and fjords, several by Arthur Neustadt.

"For 100 years, the elite and prestigious school known as The Ogontz School for Young Ladies was a prominent force in female private education. [...] In 1883 the school rented the Elkins Park estate of Civil War financier Jay Cooke, named 'Ogontz' for Cooke's boyhood mentor and role model-a Sandusky Indian chief. With the move, the school assumed the name of the estate and became The Ogontz School for Young Ladies. [...] For thirty-four years the school thrived in the Jay Cooke mansion, with a student body of about a hundred privileged young girls." (Quoted from the Penn State Library website)

Mary Louise Curtis (1876-1970) founder of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, was the only child of magazine and newspaper magnate Cyrus H.K. Curtis and Louisa Knapp Curtis. Her mother was the founder and editor of the Ladies' Home Journal.