Gardiner Lyceum

Gardiner Lyceum

Gardiner Lyceum building. Gardiner, Maine. Erected 1822. Burned 1870
Founder(s)	Robert Hallowell Gardiner
Established	1823
Focus	Vocational school
Key people	Benjamin Hale
Location	Gardiner, Maine, USA
Dissolved	1832

The Gardiner Lyceum was the first vocational trade school in the United States. The purpose of the school was for giving young men the skills they needed to accomplish their chosen trade. It was a vocational school education for farmers, agriculturists, and other specialized trades of the nineteenth century. It provided the scientific and technical education needed for their vocation or to become schoolmasters.

Robert Hallowell Gardiner founded the school in 1822 on land with buildings he gave to the new school. The school was given statewide recognition when there was an Act (Chapter CXCIX) in addition to an Act to incorporate was passed in February 1823 by the state of Maine governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the State of Maine, the president of the Bowdoin College, the president of the Waterville College and others called the Board of Visitors.

The directors of the Gardiner Lyceum school were men associated with higher education. The first principal and main instructor of the school was Benjamin Hale (president of Hobart College and a future professor at Dartmouth College). The next principal was a professor of Hamilton College of New York and later president of the State universities of Missouri, Maryland, and Wisconsin. The next principal was a supreme judge in the state of New Hampshire. The next principal was a graduate of Brown University.

Maine legislature provided the school with $2,000 in funds in 1823 when the school opened. The legislature provided the school with funds of $1,000 per year for six years starting in 1825. The first year in operation the school had twenty students. The school had 53 students in 1824. It had 120 students in 1825. In 1826 the student level fell off to only 55 pupils that included only 2 Gardiner native residents.

Since the location of the new school was in Gardiner, Maine and it was a lyceum (vocational secondary school, not a high school or college), it took on the name "Gardiner Lyceum" (advanced technical schooling in the town of Gardiner).