History

Caroline Baxter on water slide, 1915.

Mary Florence Stratton (left) relaxes with a fellow teacher at camp, 1915. 

Marguerite Sanderson sits on porch steps in Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1915.

Marjorie Bouvé stands by water, ca. 1915. 

The Boston Normal School of Gymnastics departed Boston for Wellesley College in 1907, creating a hole in the physical education landscape. Seven graduates of the school united to found a new school for the education of women in the physical arts. Bessie Barnes, Caroline Baxter, Marjorie Bouvé, Marguerite Sanderson, Grace Shepardson, Mary Florence Stratton, and Miriam Tobey had no building and no committed students driving their mission.

 

When they opened the Boston School of Physical Education in 1913, however, eleven young women enrolled. One hundred years later, after moving throughout the greater Boston area, the original institution now operates as Boston-Bouvé College at Northeastern University.