Boston globe northfield

Moody traveled throughout his life, but returned to make Northfield his base in He founded the schools with the help of benefactors animated by an ideal of giving poor children an elite education. Moody also held the Northfield Conferences that attracted gatherings of the faithful each summer for religious camp meetings. An entire neighborhood of densely clustered wooden houses, most not winterized, is splayed across ''Rustic Ridge" on the wooded hill east of campus.

Families were accorded year leases to come year after year to join in the gatherings. What remains today of this storied past is an eerily quiet campus. The trustees' decision to consolidate, as of last fall, on the Gill campus what had been since a single coed school with two campuses came as a shock. The property has been on the market for a year and people are growing uneasy that no buyer has emerged. The buildings include an Italian Renaissance Revival auditorium that seats 2, people, more than any other venue in Franklin County.

With its brick exterior, prominent rectangular twin towers, and rustic interior, it possesses a beauty that transcends its considerable significance to American religious history. Other buildings on the campus could be called Ruskinian, or Victorian Gothic, according to Karen Forslund Falb, a landscape historian. She grew up as a faculty child on the Gill campus and serves on two committees giving input on the disposition of the Northfield campus.

This style of architecture is characterized by gables, towers, turrets, and unusual windows. Some residents fear the campus buildings will meet the same fate as the turreted chateau that school trustees had demolished in the early s. His widow, who never liked it, handed it over to the school.

Schell also built the bridge over the Connecticut River that bears his name and today sits abandonded at the end of a road upon which vines, trees, and shrubs are encroaching. Schell built the span to get from his estate to a train station where there were daily connections to Albany, New York, Boston, and Montreal.

Police recovered a body that's believed to be Emily Ferlazzo, according to the release. An autopsy will be performed to confirm her identity and determine how she died. Joseph Ferlazzo was arrested. He is scheduled to be arraigned on a first-degree murder charge Wednesday morning in Vermont Superior Court in Burlington, police said. Others worry the school is losing its quirkiness. Alumni like Dolben are perhaps the most bitter. The school, they say, is unnecessarily destroying its history.

Many graduates are piqued at what they say was a hasty, clandestine decision. They are nervous that this change is the first in a series of cost saving moves. They worry that, in an effort to woo more students and more donations and compete with better-endowed schools, the keepers are shedding the school's quirky image.

Are you going to send your kid there? Are you going to support a school you think is dying? School administrators insist Northfield Mount Hermon is healthy, just not overly wealthy. Officials find themselves walking a tricky line: They want to justify their decision in terms of finances and education mission. But they don't want to appear alarmist.

Administrators say that running two campuses, a minute drive apart, is wasteful. Both campuses house gym facilities, dorms, dining halls, libraries, teachers, and support staff. Donations haven't come through either, he said. The school embarked on a capital campaign in , but gifts from the traditionally most generous alumni were markedly off in the downturn after the Sept.

Then administrators noticed another worrisome trend: Parents seemed leery about sending their year-olds to a sprawling 3,acre estate, and seemed to desire a smaller setting.