The Maine Central Institute, is an independent high school, founded in 1866, located in Pittsfield, Maine, in the United States. The school enrolls approximately 500 students. MCI is a nonsectarian institution. The school has both boarding students and day students.HistoryThe Maine Central Institute was founded in 1866 by Rev. Oren B. Cheney and Rev. Ebenezer Knowlton, abolitionists who also founded Bates College in nearby Lewiston, Maine. The Maine State Seminary, originally part of Bates, served as a college preparatory school, until it was dissolved in the late 1860s, and MCI (along with the Nichols Latin School in Lewiston) largely took the Seminary's place as a feeder school for Bates. The school was at its inception affiliated with the Free Will Baptists, but is officially non-sectarian today.The first building, the Institute Building (Founders Hall), was completed in 1869 and served as the primary campus building until 1958. In 1882 an early case involving the school was appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The campus has expanded greatly over the past 140 years, and became officially coeducational in 1903 with the purchase of a boarding house from Benjamin Bowden and the construction of a second floor making it Ceder Croft Hall, which in 1927 burned down during a Christmas break. Immediately after, a fundraising campaign initiated by MCI alumni began with the intention to rebuild a residence hall. The dorm was completed in October 1928 and named Alumni Hall after the generous efforts from alumni. Due to World War I increasing enrollment in 1911 it became necessary to erect a female dormitory. The building today called Weymouth Hall houses the offices of Athletics and Activities, the Dean of Students and the Dean of Residential Life, as well as the television studio (WMCI), the Health and Wellness Center, the Campus Bookstore, the Student Union, and classrooms for MCI's prestigious ESL (English as a Second Language) program.
