Tome School for Boys
The auditorium in the Tome School's abandoned Memorial Hall
Updated June 23, 2019 | By Matthew Christopher
Founded as a prep school for boys in 1894, the Tome School in Port Deposit, MD boasted beautiful beaux arts-influenced Georgian Revival style buildings designed by New-York based architecture firm Boring & Tilton, who had recently completed the immigration buildings at Ellis Island. The grounds were designed by notable landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted; it would be one of his last projects before he died in 1903. Called ‘the wealthiest secondary school in America’, Tome was the alma mater of children of such noteworthy families as Carnegie and Mellon and the son of R.J. Reynolds. Nevertheless, during the depression it fell on hard times and was closed in 1941.
In 1942 Congress appropriated the school and surrounding farmland for use as the Bainbridge Naval Training Center. Over 500,000 students would graduate from the facility before it too was closed in 1976.
In 1979 some of the buildings on the campus were used as a Job Corps site, but many were left to rot. It operated in this capacity until 1991, when stewardship of the site was turned over to the State of Maryland, who then turned it over to the Bainbridge Redevelopment Corporation. Despite the school’s designation as an historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the buildings continued to deteriorate as they were targeted by vandals.
Memorial Hall's lobby still gives a sense of how beautiful the building once was.
After my initial visits to the Tome School for Boys in 2007-2008, I was unhappy with several of my photographs of the site, particularly those taken in Memorial Hall’s stunning lobby and theater. As I frequently do, I prioritized visiting locations I hadn’t yet been to over reshooting ones I have, but in July of 2014 I returned and was able to complete what I felt was a much better documentation. The outside of the building was covered in scaffolding but it didn’t appear any work had been done to the interior. The ceiling was badly decayed and bits of plaster dangled precariously overhead, and it was clear that the years of neglect were not doing the building any favors. Two months later I was stunned to hear that Memorial Hall - the gem of the campus - was destroyed by arson. The fire would blaze for roughly a week, which caused the entire structure to collapse.
Today there is little left of the former school and training academy that meant so much to so many. As with many abandoned locations, Tome was repurposed several times and could have been again. It was a large part of the area’s history and perhaps the most noteworthy and significant architecture in the town. I have no answers, only images that capture a sliver of the school’s timeline, before it slipped into obscurity forever.
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