Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School or "MICDS" is a secular, co-educational, private school home to more than 1,200 students ranging from grades Junior Kindergarten through 12, including a separate "lower school" for children in Junior Kindergarten through Grade 4 known as the Ronald Beasley or "Beasley" School, the MICDS "Middle School", spanning grades 5 through 8, and the "Upper School", consisting of grades 9 through 12. Its 100-acre campus is located in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue.HistoryWilliam Greenleaf Eliot, founder and chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, established predecessor institutions to MICDS in the 1850s as part of the university. A boys' school, Smith Academy, was founded in 1854, and was later attended by Eliot's grandson, the future poet T. S. Eliot. A sister school for girls, Mary Institute, was founded in 1859 and was named for Eliot's late daughter Mary Rhodes Eliot, who had died at the young age of 17. In its early years, Mary Institute was located at three different locations in the City of St. Louis, the third of which was at the corner of Lake and Waterman, in the building that is now New City School.Smith Academy closed in June 1917, in part due to the proliferation of private elementary schools and public secondary schools in the area. Three months later, St. Louis Country Day School opened in northwestern St. Louis County. Inspired by the "Country Day School movement" nationally, it was not related to Smith, although first year enrollment included a number of former Smith students. St. Louis Country Day School's campus was in a bucolic setting reached by electric streetcar, far removed from the noise and grit of the city.
