History

Milestones

1896 Anne Galbraith Carey wonders about what to do about school for her son Frank. She decides he would benefit most by living at home while attending a school in a country setting with rigorous classes in the morning, a hot meal for lunch, study hall, and sports in the afternoon.

1935 After delivering a talk on the sinking of the Titanic, bespectacled Gilman senior Walter Lord wins the Princeton-Gilman Alumni Cup for the best Sixth Form speech. Nineteen years later, Lord publishes A Night to Remember, his account of the ill-fated ship, which will be read by millions and which will launch his career as a writer. In 1995, the Walter Lord Library is dedicated in John M. T. Finney Hall, the new middle school building.

1947 Gilman wins its first Maryland Scholastic Association Lacrosse title. In the championship game against Boys Latin, trailing by four with five minutes left, senior mid-fielder Redmond C. S. “Reddy” Finney wins five consecutive face-offs, leading to five unanswered goals and a Gilman victory. In 1968 he is named Gilman Headmaster, a decision that is based on formidable credentials not limited to these late-game heroics.

1950 Gilman launches a decade-long effort to expand offerings in music, art, drama, and community service. A year later, its location no longer as “rural” as it was 40 years earlier, the Gilman Country School becomes Gilman School.

1967 Mathematics teacher Ned Thompson ’45 introduces Gilman’s first computer, a closet-sized machine on the second floor of Carey Hall. By the century’s end a fiber-optic network, automated library catalog, resource databases, full Internet access, and smart boards bring a world of resources to the fingertips of Gilman students.

1972 Seniors Tom Porter, Alan Kaufmann, and Ted Trimble defeat 80 other high schools to win WBAL-TV’s “It’s Academic” quiz-show championship. They donate their cash prize to Gilman’s scholarship fund. Today that fund supports one in five Gilman students, enabling deserving boys from a wide variety of backgrounds to take advantage of a Gilman education.

1988 Community service becomes a requirement with a minimum of 50 hours in one placement during one calendar year necessary for graduation. This requisite reflects Gilman’s history of being a community school; ongoing community service projects include Green Grass, food drives to support the Donald Bentley Food Pantry, holiday toy and clothes drives to benefit Echo House, an annual American Red Cross blood drive, the Baltimore Independent School Learning Camp, and more.

1990 On April 21, 1990, the 1910 Upper School building, designed by one of Baltimore’s foremost architects David Hamilton Thomas, Jr., was dedicated as Carey Hall in memory of the school’s founder, Anne Galbraith Carey. Her grandson Wm. Polk Carey ’48 established a special fund for the buildingís maintenance. The Carey family has a history spanning more than 125 years of promoting educational excellence in the City of Baltimore, and Wm. Polk Carey holds the distinction of having made the largest single private gift in Gilman's history, giving $10 million in 2003 toward a planned renovation of Carey Hall.

Gilman School owes its very existence to the imagination of one young mother, Anne Galbraith Carey, who sought a quality education for her eight-year-old son, Frank. She believed that her son would benefit more from going to school in a country setting while living at home than from attending the city public schools or from going to a boarding school in New England.

To set her plan in motion, Carey gained assistance from one of the nation's most prominent educators. With assistance from Dr. Daniel Coit Gilman, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and other prominent Baltimorians of the day, her vision became a reality when The Country School for Boys opened its doors on September 30, 1897, in the Homewood mansion on the Johns Hopkins campus. In 1910, The Country School moved to its current 68-acre campus in Roland Park and changed its name to The Gilman Country School for Boys. In 1951, the “Country” was dropped, and the School became Gilman School.

Today Gilman is a diverse community of 983 boys in grades pre-first through 12 who come from all backgrounds and segments of the Greater Baltimore area. Gilman remains committed to the ideals Mrs. Carey instilled more than a century ago, and continues to help boys develop in mind, body, and spirit while preparing them for college and a life of honor, leadership, character, and service.