Bishop Scott Academy

Bishop Scott Academy

Second building, as depicted on 1 January 1895
Type	Defunct as of 1904
Established	1870
Location	Portland, Oregon, USA

Bishop Scott Academy was a school located in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. Affiliated with the Episcopal Church, the school was named for the Bishop Thomas Fielding Scott. The school opened in 1870 to educate young men in good citizenship and prepare them to enter the ministry. Later a military department was added to the school before the academy closed in 1904. The school organized the first American football team and held the first football game in the Pacific Northwest in 1889.

The academy was related to an earlier attempt by Scott to found a diocesan school. The Reverend William Richmond had started a school at Yamhill in 1852. Bishop Scott moved Richmond's school to present-day Lake Oswego, Oregon, where Scott had purchased 70 acres that included a school building dating to 1850. Here Scott established the Diocesan School for Boys. Bernard Cornelius, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, was appointed in 1856 by Scott as principal over 17 boarders. A primary department opened in 1858, and the school was renamed Trinity School for Boys. The school offered "both religious and secular education". Cornelius resigned in 1860, and the school closed for two years. In 1862 it reopened under leadership of the Reverend Michael Fackler. Although Cornelius returned to the reigns in 1863, he could not halt declining enrollment. Trinity school closed in 1866 and the trustees sold the property.

Funds and property were provided to Scott's successor, Bishop B. Wistar Morris, to establish another school, but located in Portland, Oregon. The land comprised 38 city lots along 19th Street, between Couch and Everett Streets in Portland. The donors were Captain George H. Flanders and his sister, Mrs. Caroline Couch (wife of John H. Couch). Morris laid the cornerstone on July 5, 1870.

The newly completed Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School opened as a boarding and day-school for boys on September 6, 1870, under principal Charles H. Allen. Comprising three storeys above a basement, the building housed 2 classrooms, recitation rooms, a parlour, library, 16 rooms for boarders, a suite for the principal and his family, and its own chapel, called Saint Timothy's. Although the total costs amounted to $15,000, no debt remained.