END OF AN ERA: The American Boychoir, a Princeton institution with a national reputation, will close after 80 years. (Photo by Emily Reeves)

The announcement last week that the American Boychoir School (ABS) was closing after 80 years — 67 of them in Princeton — came as no surprise to those familiar with its recent financial difficulties and struggles to stay alive. But the decision has prompted sadness and nostalgia among alumni, former board members, and members of the national musical community.

“There is a collective loss that I and all of my fellow alumni feel,” said Bert Navarette, the founder of Tigerlabs, the Princeton entrepreneurship center. Mr. Navarette was a student at the school from 1987 to 1990, was president of its alumni association, and served on the school’s board for 12 years.

“For many of us,” he said, “we had an opportunity that was so uniquely beautiful. We were able to sing as one, with the same quality and passion, in front of a school assembly in Wichita or alongside the New York Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta. We had a shared perspective. We realized this could have been the only time people would hear us sing. So we took a lot of pride and had a lot of professionalism. We honored the tradition of the school.”

ABS alumnus John Harger Stewart sang with the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, and in Europe before becoming Director of Vocal Activities at Washington University in St. Louis, from which he is now retired. Mr. Stewart, who still teaches voice, remembers arriving in Princeton on the bus from Columbus, Ohio, in September, 1950.

“We all have tremendous sadness and regret,” he said, speaking by phone from his home in Amenia, N.Y. “Going to the school was a life-changing experience for me. The musical training, the daily music theory, piano lessons, singing, touring all over America and being on TV — it was a wonderful experience. The paradox is that they had, this past year, a really good artistic year. They did two performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and they went to China. When they left Rosedale Road and moved to [the former St. Joseph’s Seminary in Plainsboro], I was opposed to that. And then they were confronted with financial things they didn’t know about, like getting the place up to code.”

Composer, arranger, performer, and music producer Van Dyke Parks was a classmate of Mr. Stewart from 1953 to 1957. “More than a soundbite or tolerable series of keypunches,” he wrote in an email when asked about the impact ABS had on his life. “The chief musical experience of my long career in music, that started with a social security card in ’53, and a TV series role with Ezio Pinza (along with classmates Oliver Andes and Travis Bryant).”

The closing of the school is “a national disgrace,” he wrote, “emblematic of an evaporation of arts organization funding. A reporter coined the term ‘Americana’ in the ‘50s to describe the very nature of the Boychoir. We traveled by bus through the contiguous 48 states. The archives of the school, in films ignominiously stored in dusty vaults, correspondence, and the historic significance of this institution, deserve immediate transfer to the Smithsonian, for digitalization and preservation.”

Mr. Parks recalls singing Christmas carols for Albert Einstein in the scientist’s kitchen, as Einstein played along on his violin. Another Einstein memory: “When schoolmate Tyler Gatchell (a Princeton native) and I watched the 3D movie House of Wax (’53), we heard a guffaw behind us. We turned around to see Dr. Einstein (a familiar Princeton figure on his bicycle) in 3D glasses.”

Originally known as The Columbus Boychoir, the choir and school were founded in 1937 in Columbus, Ohio. The organization moved to Princeton in 1950 and changed its name in 1980. From 1952 to 2012, the school, which is for boys from sixth to eighth grades, was based at Albemarle, the former estate of pharmaceutical magnate Gerald Lambert. Sexual abuse lawsuits brought by former students in 2002 cast a shadow on the school. A decade later, ABS sold Albemarle and moved to Plainsboro. By 2015, facing financial troubles and a dwindling enrollment, the school had relocated to Rambling Pines Day Camp in Hopewell.

“I am writing with difficult news about the American Boychoir School,” Rob D’Avanzo, chairman of the board of trustees, wrote to supporters last week. “Over the course of the summer, our anticipated enrollment for the 2017-18 school year declined unexpectedly. Students whom we had expected to return decided not to do so, and our recruiting efforts for new students failed to materialize at the levels we had seen in recent years. At present, we believe we would have only 19 to 21 boys with which to open the school in three weeks. this is at best the bare minimum for us to be able to present a professional choir that is up to our standards.”

ABS filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2015, stating it needed $350,000 to finish the school year and $3 million to emerge from bankruptcy and open for the next academic year. “Even with the continued generous support of the ABS community, the anticipated revenues would not support our operations, which include the satisfaction of our obligations under our Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization. We worked very hard with our committed staff to try to fashion a reduced-cost “break even” budget within these revenue constraints; it just could not be done,” the letter continued.

The choir numbered 80 boys when Chester “Chet” Douglass was a student at the school in the 1950s. Mr. Douglass, who chaired Harvard University’s Department of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology from 1978 to 2008, has fond memories of singing with the NBC Orchestra (now the New York Philharmonic) and going on concert tours to 33 states. “It just chugged along,” he said. “It really did appear that it set the standards for boychoir singing.”

Mr. Douglass blames the demise on several factors: the economy, parents who aren’t willing to send their 10-year-old boys away to school, and the fact that puberty comes earlier to today’s boys than it did in the past, causing their voices to change earlier. “They might have put us on a train in Indianapolis and tell us how to change trains in Philadelphia and go to Princeton, where there will be someone to meet you,” he said. “Try telling that to parents today.”

The closing of the school is lamented by Catherine Dehoney, executive director of the organization Chorus America. “For many years, the school set the standard for boychoirs and excellence in choral performance for young voices in the U.S., and it helped to inspire the founding of other boychoir programs of different models (non-boarding, year-round),” she wrote in an email. “Chorus America and others have conducted research showing the myriad benefits for children and youth who sing in a chorus …. The choral field owes a huge debt of gratitude to the work of the school over the years.”

Some alumni think the choir could come back to life. “Many of us hope for resurrection in the future,” said Mr. Navarette. “I would be remiss if I didn’t say how much admiration I have for the tireless work the entire board put in during the past 10 years, trying to continue this important mission. That has to be acknowledged. No one was doing this for any reason other than trying to continue this mission for these kids. I wanted to send my son there in two years. At some point in the future, I hope a benefactor will help us resurrect the school.”