History

Porter-Gaud School is an independent college preparatory school with historic ties to the Episcopal Church. With an approximate enrollment of 960 students in grades Kindergarten–12, Porter-Gaud is a coeducational day school located on the banks of the Ashley River in Charleston, South Carolina. Porter-Gaud represents over a century of experience in preparing students for college and guiding them through their formative years to maturity.

Reverend Anthony Toomer Porter

In 1964, three distinguished schools—Porter Military Academy, founded in 1867; the Gaud School for Boys, founded in 1908; and the Watt School, founded in 1931—merged to form Porter-Gaud.

The roots of the school go back to the Reverend Anthony Toomer Porter, an Episcopal priest, who formed the Holy Communion Church Institute in 1867 to educate children orphaned during the Civil War.  The school was later known as Porter Academy and eventually Porter Military Academy.

William Steen Gaud established the Gaud School in 1908.  In 1948, Berkeley Grimball purchased the school from Mr. Gaud, and over the course of 16 years increased the enrollment to nearly 150 as the Gaud School attained a position of eminence among Southeastern preparatory schools.

Mrs. Ann Carson Elliott, Berkeley Grimball’s mother, founded in 1931 the Watt School, a coeducational primary school, which served as a “feeder school” for the Gaud School.

William Steen Gaud

In 1964, the original Porter Military Academy campus in downtown Charleston was sold to the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (now CSX) donated the 70-acre site on Albemarle Point where Porter-Gaud now stands.

In July 1964, the three schools merged, dropping the military program, and the new entity, Porter-Gaud School, opened its doors to 435 male students in grades 1–12.

As a modern school plant began taking shape across the Ashley River on the property donated by the railroad, classes met at the old Porter campus.

Porter-Gaud opened its new campus in September 1965 with an enrollment of 469 day students. In the following year it became one of the first schools in the South to adopt an open admissions policy. In 1972, the school became coeducational. Female students were admitted into the first three grades that year, and by the fall of 1976 the program was accelerated to include girls at all levels of the school.