Fairhaven High School

If Fairhaven, Massachusetts, has a resident philanthropist, it’s Henry Huttleston Rogers. Rogers, who made a fortune in oil refining, began donating buildings to his hometown in 1885, including an elementary school, a public library, and the sprawling campus of Fairhaven High School.

Rogers had the majestic school built in 1905 with an eye toward the future. The building, with its own electric generation plant, a home economics kitchen, facilities for agricultural studies, and the first indoor basketball court in an American high school, was donated in 1906, on the 50th anniversary of Rogers’s own graduation from the school in 1856—back when it was made of wood.  A new wing was added in 2000, bringing the school updated facilities and improved accessibility, and keeping with Rogers’s interest in progress.

In 2017, Architectural Digest named the eight-acre campus the most beautiful high school in the state, citing its Italian masonry and German woodcarving.