By Dave Sawyer
The Grand Haven Tribune

The Akeley Institute, a prestigious finishing school for girls, opened in Grand Haven in 1888, and was located downtown, just east of Central Park. As the years passed, the sterling reputation of the school, with its fine staff and curriculum, attracted girls from all over the Midwest.

While the school’s campus was impressive, today I’m writing about the girls who attended the institute. I found more than a hundred photos of them in the museum archives — many with notes — which nicely chronicles their daily lives at the school. Local historian Wally Ewing’s research added more details, enabling me to create this glimpse into what their experience at the school was like over a century ago.

For $650 a year in the 1890s, a girl from a financially well-off family could attend the elite school, living in an attractive dormitory and taking meals in a sumptuous dining room with other girls from well-off families. She attended classes five days a week, mandatory ones in cooking, sewing and housekeeping, as well as piano, dancing and art.

Chapel was mandatory each morning, and on Sundays, the girls walked Washington Street in their uniforms to St. John’s Episcopal Church. Local boys attended services as well, with some not interested in worship but instead the girls from the institute, hoping they might get by their chaperones and have a chance to talk to them. Some had a favorite, and tried to predict where she might sit and leave a note for her in a hymnal.

The girls were escorted on field trips around town, riding the Interurban down Washington and out to the beach, where a photo shows some posing below the Highland Park Hotel around 1910. Or riding a carriage to Duncan Woods for a hike in the woods. The most persistent boys sometimes trailed them back to campus, serenading them from below their windows, and neighbors were sometimes shocked by girls in long-skirted uniforms shimmying down drain pipes at night, for — as one neighbor complained — “God knows what devilry.”

After leaving the institute, some girls went on to excel in college and beyond, and school records indicate some became journalists, missionaries, lawyers and other professionals at a time when women were discouraged from pursuing a career. Others used what they learned to become outstanding homemakers.

Whatever their path, by the time the institute closed its doors in 1928, many had made lifelong friends during their years there, and cherished memories that would last for the rest of their days.

— The Tri-Cities Historical Museum is free and provides visitors an opportunity to look through the windows of time into the history of Northwest Ottawa County, including the communities of Grand Haven, Spring Lake and Ferrysburg. Learn more at visitgrandhaven.com/listing/tri-cities-historical-museum.