The Booth School or "The Booth School: A Country School for Boys and Girls" was a private or independent school in the Philadelphia Main Line suburbs from 1938 to 1976. The campus it occupied for most of its existence was located at the intersection of Ithan Avenue and Clyde Road in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and is now the site of Hill Top Preparatory School; this site is in Lower Merion Township. History Timeline The school was founded as The Devon School in 1938 by Phoebe Booth (Mrs. John Wesley Booth, née Barsby). A graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania (at that time West Chester Normal School), the former one-room school-teacher gathered several neighbors to serve as teachers. They started the school in the Booth residence at the old Samuel Eckert "Rockwood" estate on East Waterloo Avenue in Devon, Pennsylvania, with about 20 students. The Rockwood facilities included the house itself as well as classrooms occupying a converted Carriage House built in 1891 and an adjacent gymnasium constructed in the late 1930s. By 1940, the school name had been changed to The Booth School, and it had grown to serve grades 1-9 with a Nursery School and a Kindergarten, employing 13 faculty in addition to Mrs. Booth. Continued growth resulted in the school moving to a larger location at the old Snowdon estate (its final location) in Rosemont, PA in 1944. Mrs. Booth served as the school's only headmistress. Innovative in educational issues (such as coeducation and teaching of reading through phonics) and conservative in outlook, Mrs. Booth was both admired and criticized by her students. Associate headmistress Phoebe Booth Dechert (Mrs. Peter Dechert), Mrs. Booth's daughter, assisted in administration. Mrs. Dechert also taught English and other subjects, directed student plays, and later spearheaded the school's development from a respected elementary school to a full 12-year curriculum in 1961, making it K-12 and over 300 strong at its peak. Booth also had a summer school and a summer camp called "Hurricane Hill" on its campus. The Booth School closed in 1976. Some of the faculty participated in the founding of the Woodlynde School of Strafford, at about the same time Booth closed. Facilities The main building on the Devon, PA campus was a residence originally built by Samuel Eckert in the late 1800's. An additional single-story building utilized a converted Carriage House constructed by Eckert in 1891. A small gymnasium was