Making the mountain campus a home
By 1919, enrollment in the Summer Language Schools filled the Middlebury campus to capacity, and Professor Edward Day Collins, Director of Summer Sessions, felt sure that a dedicated English School program would be equally popular. The campus was full, but there was room at the Inn, so Collins proposed that the English School locate itself at the Bread Loaf Inn for the summer of 1920. Not only would it be the first time that summer students boarded with tourists at a working hotel, it would also be the first time that the Bread Loaf Inn was part of Middlebury’s academic program.
Summer, 1920.
Despite the trustees’ considerable doubt in Collins’ “experiment”, it proved to be a unique success. The English School made the Inn profitable, added a valuable social and intellectual element, and promoted outdoor adventures in Battell Park.
In December 1934, the English School director ran the Inn primarily as an educational institution and managed the hotel, and by 1943 the Inn was used strictly for summer school students.