By Maggie Jackson, Josie LaBare, and Bianca Patel
Students at Seven Hills know a lot about history, but how much do they know about the history of our school?
“What do you know about the history of Seven Hills?” When we asked this question numerous students responded: “I don’t know!” and “I don’t know a lot.” Even though many of our students do not know the whole of Seven Hills’ history, some see a bit more than nothing. When asked about what she knew about the history of our school, Lydia Zhang, an 8th grade student, who has been at Seven Hills since the third grade, brought up some memories she had from her earlier years at Seven Hills. “I remember… there was this little page of this book hung up on the wall, and it was all burnt, and it was about how the whole school burnt down,” she said (speaking about Ms. Fox, the Lotspeich principal at the time). Meghan Smith, who is also an eighth-grade student at Seven Hills since pre-K, recalls stories about Seven Hills in earlier grades. “It started with a woman who took it upon herself [to educate children and make] her home a school,” Meghan said. “Her house to [got larger and larger] ” until Seven Hills was created.
A Peek Into the Past
The history of Seven Hills dates way back to 1906. There were originally three campuses. The main campus, which is now Doherty, was founded by Mary Harlan Doherty in 1906. Mary named the school College Preparatory School. Helen Gibbons Lotspeich established the other campus, which is now Lotspeich, in 1916. The original name was Clifton Open-Air School. The final campus, Hillsdale School, was founded in 1927 by a group of parents. In 1928, the school found an alternative private education. You may have seen signs near the Schiff Center or on your school shirts saying “50th anniversary”. The 50th-anniversary signs and shirts may make you wonder, “How is it only 50 years if these schools are almost all 100 years old?” This is because the three schools were not combined until 1974, about 50 years ago. These schools didn’t even accept high school boys until 1960 and middle school boys until 1977. The Seven Hills School is now the largest non-religious-based school in Ohio.
Differences and Similarities
Many things have changed and stayed the same in Seven Hills’ history. For example, we did, in fact, have a football team at one point! It was only for a year, and we weren’t the best, but many students today want to bring football back to Seven Hills, even if they didn’t know it was there in the first place. Football started to settle a rivalry between us and Cincinnati Country Day. The rivalry leads to our similarity; we’ve always been an highly academic school. In A History of The Seven Hills School by Eileen R. Driscoll, the author goes into extreme detail about the highs and lows of Seven Hills. Still, throughout the book, we have shown our pursuit of excellence that has led us to be where we are today. We hope the Seven Hills School will continue to flourish and always change for the better.
