The Gatehouse
The final architectural renovation to the quadrangular campus was the Cambridge-style neo-gothic structure that served as the joinder between the western 'entry' wall of the Chapel and the eastern wall of Merchant House. Basement-less, The building serves as the Polenstrasse public entrance to the school grounds--to both the Quad and the Chapel. The ground floor consists of the massive pointed archway in which a large wooden double door has been fashioned--the easternmost door in which has been cut out a small, human-size doorway that can be used separately and independently of the large double doors. The first floor consists of the offices and residence of the school's headmaster. The Third floor is decorative sculptures and spires and roofing.
Access to the first floor --which are, in fact, elevated one half storey above the first floor of Merchant House and half a floor down from Merchant House's second floor apartments--in which are housed the offices and living quarters for the school headmaster, is gained through the same u-shaped, switchback stone staircase that serves all of Merchant House's upper floors. This gorgeous staircase was built in the same Gothic style as the rest of the campus's notable landmarks: the Dining Hall interior, the Grand Colonnade of Aubrey Hall's ground floor, the continuous, wrap-around triple-arched windowed hallway of Aubrey and Châtelaine's first floor, and, of course, the Gatehouse itself. The glaring (and intentional) difference between the stylings of the school's older buildings and that of Gatehouse was the use of a lighter, yellowish sandstone for this latter as opposed to the gray stone and concrete mixtures employed for the former, older structures.
Though many other windows of the residential rooms built into the outer walls of Engineering House, Aubrey, and Merchant House employ leaded glass, the headmaster's office room is the only window to use stained glass. (The dim-lighted Chapel, of course, was retrofitted with new, higher quality stained glass windows in the 20th Century, but these often went unnoticed due to the small number of window recesses in the massive walls of the old building.)
The reason the offices and living quarters of Gatehouse did not line up with the floor levels of it's neighboring Merchant House is due to the height of the massive wooden doors that filled the 12-foot archway beneath--a twelve foot archway that extended the length of the width of Merchant House, though, on the internal, Quad side, it did open up into a wide view of the eastern portion of the courtyard due to the entrance carved out for the entrance to the new Merchant House staircase.
The final architectural renovation to the quadrangular campus was the Cambridge-style neo-gothic structure that served as the joinder between the western 'entry' wall of the Chapel and the eastern wall of Merchant House. Basement-less, The building serves as the Polenstrasse public entrance to the school grounds--to both the Quad and the Chapel. The ground floor consists of the massive pointed archway in which a large wooden double door has been fashioned--the easternmost door in which has been cut out a small, human-size doorway that can be used separately and independently of the large double doors. The first floor consists of the offices and residence of the school's headmaster. The Third floor is decorative sculptures and spires and roofing.
Access to the first floor --which are, in fact, elevated one half storey above the first floor of Merchant House and half a floor down from Merchant House's second floor apartments--in which are housed the offices and living quarters for the school headmaster, is gained through the same u-shaped, switchback stone staircase that serves all of Merchant House's upper floors. This gorgeous staircase was built in the same Gothic style as the rest of the campus's notable landmarks: the Dining Hall interior, the Grand Colonnade of Aubrey Hall's ground floor, the continuous, wrap-around triple-arched windowed hallway of Aubrey and Châtelaine's first floor, and, of course, the Gatehouse itself. The glaring (and intentional) difference between the stylings of the school's older buildings and that of Gatehouse was the use of a lighter, yellowish sandstone for this latter as opposed to the gray stone and concrete mixtures employed for the former, older structures.
Though many other windows of the residential rooms built into the outer walls of Engineering House, Aubrey, and Merchant House employ leaded glass, the headmaster's office room is the only window to use stained glass. (The dim-lighted Chapel, of course, was retrofitted with new, higher quality stained glass windows in the 20th Century, but these often went unnoticed due to the small number of window recesses in the massive walls of the old building.)
The reason the offices and living quarters of Gatehouse did not line up with the floor levels of it's neighboring Merchant House is due to the height of the massive wooden doors that filled the 12-foot archway beneath--a twelve foot archway that extended the length of the width of Merchant House, though, on the internal, Quad side, it did open up into a wide view of the eastern portion of the courtyard due to the entrance carved out for the entrance to the new Merchant House staircase.
There were two hidden "secret" doors inside the headmaster's quarters that were built into the chamber walls in the 1888 remodel. One led to a "safe room" that was created behind the west wall of the headmaster's office and the other which led to a secret passage behind the east wall of the headmaster's bed chamber. The first of the two rooms was created in reaction to the foiled 1886 assassination plot on the school's fifth headmaster, Jean-Paul de Rothschild (by members of his own family). It was a windowless 120 cm by two meter lead-lined and concrete-reinforced chamber designed as a temporary refuge for the headmaster in case of emergency. Access to said safe room came through a faux floor-to-ceiling shelving unit at the north end of the west wall of the office. The mahogany monstrosity could be swung outward (toward the headmaster's desk) and then locked from the inside once returned to its flush-with-the-wall state. The room inside was fitted with a chair but never electricity or other accoutrements as it was only envisioned as a very short-term solution to danger. Any other accessories or paraphernalia was totally up to the discretion of the presiding headmaster.
The secret passageway was created out of existing behind-the-wall scaffolding that workmen had used when tending to maintenance and painting of the chapel ceilings and walls. It was created at the insistence of the same Headmaster de Rothschild, saying that he desired a secondary escape route from his private quarters. Thus, the catwalks existing around the chapel ceiling were reinforced, partially enclosed, and connected to one of the upper meeting/conference rooms in the southern wall of Engineering Hall (the wall that buttressed up against the Chapel's northernmost wall). Access to this passageway came from a hidden wall-door in the west wall of the headmaster's bed chamber--one that was typically hidden behind a writing desk or the headmaster's bed, depending on the individual headmaster's room decor choices, of course. Access to the one of the smaller conference rooms beside the Grand Conference Room was again achieved through a wall-door that was hidden behind some thick patterned Damask velvet wall curtains which served the wealthy 19th Century Victorian elite in the same capacity as mediæval tapestries did: as both insulator and sound dampener.
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