Rowland Hall St. Mark's School photograph collection, 1890-2005

Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s School, known as Rowland Hall, is an independent private school in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was founded as St. Mark’s Grammar School for boys in 1867 by Episcopal Bishop Daniel Sylvester Tuttle. In 1890, the Episcopal Church founded Rowland Hall, a boarding school for girls. In 1896, when Utah’s statehood lead to the establishment of a public education system, the Episcopal Church closed St. Mark’s. Rowland’s Hall remained open. In the 1930s, amidst the Great Depression, the Episcopal Church recommended closing Rowland’s Hall; however, parents and alumni organized to fundraise to keep the school open. It separated from the Episcopal Church in 1948. Several years later, in 1956, St. Mark’s School was reopened by Bishop Richard S. Watson as a school for boys to prepare for college. 1964, the two schools merged. In 1982, the school added Rowmark Ski Academy to provide both education and coaching for young ski athletes.

The campuses of the two schools was originally located on a city block in the Salt Lake City neighborhood the Avenues, with Rowland Hall originally housed in a former private home that had been built in 1962. In 1876, with the number of boarded students decreasing, Rowland Hall closed its boarding department. The school’s enrollment grew in the 1980s, leading the institution to move its Upper School students to a former public school building on Lincoln Street in 1984. In 1994, the school constructed facilities for middle school students adjoining the property on Lincoln Street. In 1999, the school purchased nine acres of land on Guardsman Way to serve as the site for a new campus. In May 2001, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City purchased the historic campus in the Avenues with an agreement to allow Rowland Hall to continue functioning in the buildings until new facilities were construction. On December 2, 2002, the McCarthey Campus for younger children opened. In 2011, after a lengthy legal battle, the school purchased property adjacent to the McCarthey Campus from the Mt. Olivet Cemetery. In 2013, construction began on the Richard R. Steiner Campus, with the athletic fields being completed in 2014. As of 2021, the middle and upper schools remained in the facilities on Lincoln Street, with plans to construct first a middle school and then a high school on the Richard R. Steiner Campus following the completion of fundraising.