MICDS (Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School) is a secular, co-educational, independent school home to more than 1,250 students ranging from grades Junior Kindergarten through 12. Its campus is located in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue. Each of the school's three divisions operate somewhat independently as a “school within a school”. The Lower School, also referred to as The Ronald S. Beasley School, or “Beasley” for short, is for students in grades junior kindergarten through 4. The MICDS Middle School, grades 5 to 8, is in the former Mary Institute facilities. The Upper School on the former Country Day School campus serves grades 9 through 12. History William 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 17. In its early years, Mary Institute moved twice within the city of St. Louis; its third building, at the corner of Lake and Waterman, 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 a number of former Smith students enrolled that first year. 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. Mary Institute moved to its Ladue campus in 1931 and became independent of Washington University in 1949. The Mary Institute building contains a three-figure bronze sculpture by Cyrus Dallin: Alma Mater, honoring schoolmaster Edmund Hamilton Sears and donated by Eliza Northrop McMillan. By the 1950s, the tranquility of the Country Day campus was disrupted by the growth of the adjacent Lambert–Saint Louis International Airport. St. Louis Country Day School moved to a new campus next to Mary Institute in Ladue in 1958, and eventually sold its old campus to the airport. Eliot's grandson, Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, who attended Mary