Brown-Atkin did not only find the perfect house when she moved to Millbrook, but also a refreshing community perspective. She says that Millbrook is full of "people who really do care about their town, and that's really wonderful." She continues, "It was just a charming life and as close to a 1950s sitcom as I could get," she says—again with a light chuckle.
Millbrook School
Although Millbrook seemed like an ideal place to raise a family, Brown-Atkin had issues with the public school system her oldest attended. The village has since incorporated multiple campuses into the unified Millbrook Central School district. Given her initial troubles, Brown-Atkin sent her youngest to surrounding private schools, including a stint at Millbrook School—a private preparatory school located on the outskirts of the village on hundreds of acres of farmland.
Nineteen-year-old LaGrange resident Jessica Marcus graduated in 2009; she now attends Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Although during her time at Millbrook School she did not necessarily understand the subtleties of attending a boarding school, in retrospect she greatly values the unique education she received. "It's a prep school but you're not just prepping for college," says Marcus. "You are preparing to speak to future bosses, apply for jobs, react to difficult situations and basically how to be an adult. You're living alone in a community where you have to rely on yourself."
Marcus also credits Millbrook School with instilling in her an awareness of the earth as an ecosystem needing stewardship. "If I'm leaving a room I make sure the lights are off. If there's no recycling bin I get confused," she says. Marcus is now very surprised that some people "don't notice how the environment is effected by what we do."
Alongside the increasing focus on environmental issues, Millbrook School also demonstrates an appreciation for the arts. Bill Hardy, head of the Art Department at Millbrook School, explains that the arts have always been viewed by the administration as a valuable aspect of a well-rounded education. "They have furnished us with a wonderful facility—the Holbrook Art Center—a 37,000-square-foot building that houses drawing, painting, ceramics, a lecture room, music studios, set design shop, a theater, photo studio, dark room, and a formal gallery," he says.
Every year the art department works closely with various arts foundations to exhibit the works of a specifically influential artist. This year, the Gordon Parks Foundation will supply the school with timeless prints by the Life photographer for the students to study. In turn, students will be called on to educate visitors about Parks when an exhibition of Parks's work is mounted in May. The foundation's goal is to preserve the legacy of the artist, Hardy explains. "There's no better way of doing that than to devote a course to it."
Art classes are electives at Millbrook School, however Hardy believes they are not viewed as such by the student body. "Studying the arts has a great deal to do with the way kids understand life at Millbrook," he says. "They want the total educational experience and the arts are part of that."
The Millbrook Myth
Millbrook, however, like any small town is not without its share of contentious issues. The primary reoccurring disagreements amongst villagers revolve around developers wanting to build on the untouched land or renovate historic but unused buildings.
The Thorne Memorial Building, originally erected in 1895 as an educational facility, now sits dormant in the heart of the village. Numerous plans to renovate the building were proposed over the past few decades, but none have come into fruition. Similar plans were in the works for Bennett College, an all-girls finishing school that opened in 1907 and closed in the late 1970s. Crumbling buildings now litter the site. Renovation ideas have been discussed by the local government but the campus has yet to undergo any changes since it closed.
