Anne O’Hare McCormick 1880-1954 / Saint Mary of the Springs Academy

Side A: In 1937, Anne O’Hare McCormick became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence. She was born in Yorkshire, England and moved to Ohio as a child. She was educated at the Academy of St. Mary of the Springs. As a freelance writer, McCormick contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and others. She became a regular correspondent for the Times in 1922 and was the first woman to join its editorial board in 1936. As a Times correspondent in Europe during the tumultuous years before and during World War II, she conducted interviews with leaders including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin. Side B: On this site stood St. Mary of the Springs Academy, a school for girls first founded by the Dominican Sisters in 1830 in Somerset, Ohio, to respond to the educational needs of frontier Catholics. The school operated in Somerset until 1866 when a devastating fire destroyed the buildings. The Sisters occupied borrowed space until Theodore Leonard, a Columbus businessman, offered them land and bricks to rebuild in Columbus. The Sisters accepted, and Leonard built St. Mary’s Academy in Columbus in 1868. To reflect the natural springs on the property, “of the Springs” was added to the name. The Academy closed in 1966.