Jacob Tome Institute, Tome Road, between Bainbridge Road & Route 276, Port Deposit, Cecil County, MD
Summary
Significance: Constructed 1900-1908 on a hill above the Susquehanna River just outside Port Deposit, Maryland, the Tome School for Boys played an important role in private school, naval, and vocational education. The architecture of the school is a significant example of Beaux Arts design used for an entire school. Its architects (Boring and Tilton; Newman and Harris; Wyatt and Nolting; and Parker and Thomas) all were of national reputation. The master plan is a significant example of Beaux-Arts campus design executed by Charles W. Leavitt, Jr. The Tome School for Boys and its parent school, the Tome Institute, exemplified private school philanthropy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jacob Tome, a prominent Port Deposit businessman and its first millionaire, built and endowed the Tome Institute in 1894 to provide a free education in both vocational and college-preparatory studies for all of the white children of the town, male and female. The Tome School for Boys was established as part of the institute five years later under the direction of James Cameron Mackenzie, a nationally recognized leader in the secondary-school movement of the period, as a tuition-charging, boarding school for boys. It became one of the preeminent preparatory boarding schools in northern Maryland. After the Tome School for Boys closed in 1941, the campus was acquired by the U.S. Navy, becoming part of the Bainbridge Naval Training Station in 1942. Except for a brief hiatus after World War II, the Tome School campus itself was used as the Naval Academy Preparatory School from 1943 until 1974. From 1979 until 1991, it was leased by the Navy to the U.S. Department of Labor to house the Susquehanna Job Corps Training Center.
Survey number: HABS MD-1110
Building/structure dates: 1900-1908 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1942- ca. 1952 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 84001760
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