Miss Hall's School has chosen to date its founding from 1898, as that is when Miss Mira Hinsdale Hall began her forty-year leadership of the School, an era that brought the School to the forefront of women's independent secondary education. A broader historical view would be that the present school is a successor institution to one founded in 1800 by Miss Hall's great aunt, Nancy Hinsdale. That was the first girls' boarding school established in Massachusetts and the first attempt to provide advanced education for young women in the town of Pittsfield. The School evolved through various owners throughout the 1800s and was known at one point as the Pittsfield Young Ladies' Seminary. In 1898 Miss Hall bought the school that was sitting at South and Reed streets and began to apply her many talents to its expansion. For the next nine years, Miss Hall not only enrolled high school girls but also incorporated a coeducational primary day program into her school.
 
The School held, in 1906, certification in the New England Entrance Certificate Board, which allowed students who satisfactorily completed the College Preparatory Course to be admitted to Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Wells "without examination."
 
In February 1923, tragedy struck when a fire broke out in the ceiling of the school's gymnasium. All of the students and faculty escaped safely, but the fire took the life of one employee and destroyed the estate. Miss Hall, then 60 years old, chose to rebuild and in October 1924 the school's current Georgian building was completed. At that time, the school incorporated as a non-profit educational institution and established a self-perpetuating board of trustees. Winthrop M. Crane Jr. became the first board president. Miss Hall's School continued to grow in reputation, and became a nationally recognized college-preparatory school for girls. In 1931, Fortune Magazine, reporting on the modern trend in feminine education in private schools, listed Miss Hall's among the nation's top ten schools.
 
Mira Hall died suddenly on August 25, 1937, while on vacation in Maine. In the words of students who wrote a tribute at the time of her death, she "inspired in us the will to live our lives well and to make them worthy of her confidence in us."
 
Notable alumnae
Jean Erdman, influential figure in the world of modern dance and part of the Martha Graham Dance Company