Celina Xiong ’27
Contributor

Long Walk to Longman

Driving through the dense shrubbery and over the bridge, a visitor’s first glance at the Loomis Chaffee campus is a small, red house atop a hill. Under the dome-like roof resides a little community of Loomis girls that makes up Longman Hall.
“[We have] eight sophomores and two prefects,” said Hattie Willard ’26, a current resident of Longman.
Longman Hall was named after Evelyn Beatrice Longman, wife of headmaster Nathaniel Horton Batchelder. Located right across the Head’s House, its original purpose was to serve as Evelyn Longman’s art studio and to support her sculpting interest.
“If you’ve ever been in the triples or any of the doubles, [you’ll notice that] they all have very high ceilings,” said Ms. Corman, former dorm head of Longman and the Associate Director of the Norton Family Center for Common Good. She elaborated that the structure was presumably to allow more space for creativity and daylight.
Eventually, the studio evolved into a boy’s dorm before converting to the Longman Hall that the school knows today. Ms. Corman served as the dorm head of Longman between 2017 and 2018.
“The relationship that I built with those ten girls was lifelong. Those are the girls that I still keep in touch with today,” said Ms. Corman. “And so I would say that the intimacy of Longman is very special.”
Indeed, one of the aspects of Longman that Hattie Willard emphasized was the secluded nature of the dorm common room.
“I like that we have a common room that’s open [for us] only. It [doesn’t have] a ton of people in it,” she said. “We have a kitchen and a fridge that we can use. It’s only shared amongst ten people.”
“It’s a very different feeling [from living] in a fifty-person dorm,” Ms. Corman added. “I was able to put [the Longman girls] on a toaster and take them bowling. I was able to take them apple picking because there were only 10 of them. But if I wanted to do that with Cutler, I [would] have to get people to drive four toasters, and it’s more like an [organized] event than it was with Longman.”
“It really becomes like a family.” Ms. Corman concluded.
During the two years Ms. Corman lived in Longman, she — along with Mr. Michael Donegan, Dean of Students, and his wife — decided to incorporate a leadership program unique to the girls of Longman.
“The Longman Leadership Institute was the old one, but now it’s [transformed] into the Chaffee Leadership Institute,” Willard, a participant, said. “It’s kind of like a leadership seminar. [We talk] about how to be a leader [and discuss] leadership traits like character strength.”
“[Longman] was kind of a living-and-learning community, which is pretty common in colleges now,” Ms. Corman said. “And so we were modeling it off of that, where students were living in Longman and also learning together in the [Longman Leadership] program.”
“I feel like everyone who lives in Longman really likes [the dorm]. Some people think it’s far away or too small, but they haven’t lived there [to know].” Willard said.
To summarize Longman Hall in Ms. Corman’s words: it’s worth the walk.