Breck School

Breck School has its origins in Wilder (Jackson County), Minnesota where, through the efforts of the Rev. David Griffin Gunn, it was incorporated as an Episcopalian school in 1886 under the name Breck Mission and Farm School. The school was named for Episcopalian missionary and educator James Lloyd Breck (1818-1876), who had been active in Minnesota during the 1850-1867 period. It received its first students (nine boys and ten girls) in 1888, and was attended largely by farm children and adults seeking to learn English.

The school flourished during the 1890s with enrollments peaking at around 500, but the depressed local economy forced it to close in 1906. In 1916 the school reopened in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul, where it remained, in successive buildings, until 1956. The school's finances remained problematic until after World War II, but attendance during the St. Paul era gradually increased from a handful of students to more than 325 by the mid-1950s. Under a new administration beginning in 1938, the school added grades one through eight and also inaugurated a boarding school component that gained in popularity during the dislocation of the wartime years.

In 1956 Breck sold its St. Paul campus to Luther Theological Seminary and relocated to a new campus on the River Road in Minneapolis. The school eliminated its military program in 1959, feeling that it had become anachronistic. At the same time the Breck administration focused on increasing the quality of the academic program. By the 1970s, the student enrollment had stabilized at more than 500, academic standing had increased dramatically, the school was financially sound, and boasted an attractive modern campus. The school moved again in 1981, this time to a new and larger campus in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley.

From the guide to the Breck School records., 1850-1986., (Minnesota Historical Society)