James Rouse

James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 – April 9, 1996), founder of The Rouse Company, was a pioneering American real estate developer, urban planner, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist.

Youth, education, early career

James "Jim" Rouse was born in Easton, Maryland, the son of Lydia Agnes (née Robinson) and Willard Goldsmith Rouse, a canned-foods broker. His father, a lawyer trained at Johns Hopkins University, once ran as the state's attorney for Harford County. When he lost, the Rouse family moved from Bel Air, Maryland to Easton. Rouse grew up in Easton (then population: 5,000) on a well-to-do street on the edge of town. He was taught at home by his mother until second grade, when he was transferred to a public school (which found him to be well prepared enough to skip a grade). In 1930 at the age of 16, in his senior year of high school, Rouse faced significant life changes: he lost his father to cancer of the bladder and mother to heart failure, and childhood home on Brooklett's Avenue to bank foreclosure. Rouse was funded by his brother Bill to attend the private preparatory Tome School in Port Deposit, Maryland for a year.

W. H. D. Rouse

William Henry Denham (W. H. D.) Rouse (/raʊz/; 30 May 1863 – 10 February 1950) was a pioneering British teacher who advocated the use of the Direct Method of teaching Latin and Greek.

Life

Born in Calcutta, India on 30 May 1863, when the family returned home on leave to Britain Rouse was sent to Regent's Park College in London, where he studied as a lay student. In 1881 he gained a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge. Rouse gained a double first in the Classical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, where he also studied Sanskrit. He became a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge in 1888.

After brief spells at Bedford School (1886-1888) and Cheltenham College (1890-1895), he became a schoolmaster at Rugby School, where he encouraged Arthur Ransome - against his parents' wishes - to become a writer. Ransome later wrote, "My greatest piece of good fortune in coming to Rugby was that I passed so low into the school ... that I came at once into the hands of a most remarkable man whom I might otherwise never have met. This was Dr W.H.D. Rouse."