The Melvoin Building that now houses the Middle School replaced the Howe Building, which opened in the fall of 1957 but after a half century of service proved of a design and construction type that no longer permitted rehabilitation in a manner consistent with the School’s needs. Accordingly, in 2013 representatives of the School approached the Howe family to broach the idea, upon demolishment of the Howe Building, to memorialize Dr. Howe by naming the Headmaster’s House—still unnamed—in his honor.
This idea received strong support from the five living grandchildren of Dr. Howe, but with what they regarded as a small qualification: Howe Howe should be named in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Howe. The suggested addition of Mrs. Howe, for whom an assembly room in the basement of Hamilton Chapel had already been named, met with some initial resistance. Accordingly, the five grandchildren prepared and submitted to the Board of Trustees and Head of School a memorandum in support of their request to add Mrs. Howe.
Happily the request was granted and Howe House was formally named in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Howe at the Annual Meeting of the Belmont Hill Corporation on April 17, 2014. In 2019 Howe House ceased for the first time to function as the Head of School’s personal residence. After conversion, it reopened in the fall of 2021 as the School’s principal business office, including that of the Head of School.