The Webb Schools
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| The Webb Schools | |
| Principes non Homines Sapientia Amicitia Atque Honor |
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| School type | Private |
|---|---|
| Established | 1922, 1981 |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Schools | Webb School of California Vivian Webb School |
| Location | Claremont, California |
| Website | http://www.webb.org |
The Webb Schools consists of Webb School of California for boys, Vivian Webb School for girls, and the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology.
Tucked away in the quiet foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, just 40 minutes east of downtown Los Angeles, is the 70-acre campus of The Webb Schools – one of the country’s most prestigious independent boarding college-preparatory schools. With just over 350 students and 50 faculty members, the institution is a self-contained community dedicated to turning intellectually keen boys and girls into highly educated, honor-bound young leaders. Character education is a founding principle of the school.
The schools provide a unique response to the formative differences in learning between boys and girls by offering a majority of ninth and tenth grade classes in a single-sex environment. Co-educational courses are introduced gradually after the first two years. In addition, each school is represented by its own governing bodies, providing numerous leadership opportunities for girls and boys.
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[edit] History
Founded in 1922 by lifelong educator Thompson Webb, The Webb Schools have their roots not only in California, but also, more than half a century before its founding, in a small community 2,500 miles from Webb’s Claremont home.
In 1870, William Robert “Sawney” Webb (father of Thompson Webb) became principal and sole teacher at the Culleoka Institute in North Carolina which he soon renamed Webb School. The school quickly developed a reputation for challenging and unique teaching methods, and allowed students such unheard of freedoms as studying under the shade of a tree as opposed to a classroom. Sawney Webb mixed a curriculum of rigorous study programs with discipline to turn out superior students (at one point, the school became famous for having produced more than twice as many Rhodes Scholars as any other school in America). In 1886, Sawney Webb moved the Webb School west to Bell Buckle, Tenn., where it still exists today (Editor’s Note: there is also a Webb School in Knoxville, Tenn.).
The year after Sawney moved his school and family to Tennessee, Thompson Webb, the youngest of eight children, was born.
Thompson Webb graduated from his father’s school in 1907. Thompson continued his education at the University of North Carolina where he graduated in 1911. After college, his health and the suggestion of doctors led Thompson to move west to a warmer climate; he moved to the California desert near Indio and worked as a farm hand and eventually bought his own piece of land and started a career as a farmer.
On one of his occasional visits to Los Angeles, Thompson met Vivian Howell, the daughter of a Methodist minister. Six months after their first meeting, Thompson convinced Vivian to become a farmer’s wife and the two were married on June 22, 1915. Vivian was 20 and Thompson was 28.
For three years after their marriage, the Webbs farmed together and increased their holdings until a diseased onion crop, in which Thompson invested heavily, wiped out all their savings. Broke and carrying high debt, Webb did not have the capital to farm and, because the country was involved in World War I, was unable to sell his land.
It was at about that time that Webb got an urgent call from his father, asking him to return to the Bell Buckle school where a shortage of male teachers (also because of the war) threatened the school’s existence. For four years, Thompson Webb worked at his father’s school as an instructor until his father’s teachers returned from the war to claim their jobs. Since Thompson’s services were no longer needed, he saw the opportunity to move back to California to open his own private residential school. And, while he barely had the money to make the trip, he found a way to start a school.
The first suggestion that Thompson Webb start a school in California came from Sherman Day Thacher, founder of the Thacher School in Ojai Valley (25 miles east of Santa Barbara). Thacher told Webb that his school was turning down dozens of qualified students every year and that an empty school near Claremont was for sale. If Thompson opened a school there, Thacher agreed to refer his applicants. Through an honest and candid proposal to I.W. Baughman, real estate broker for the Claremont property, a deal was struck whereby Thompson Webb got his school in 1922.
Thompson and Vivian’s school for boys grew from a first year enrollment of 14 boys to today’s 300-plus mix of boys and girls. Over the years, and as word about this boys’ school in Claremont got out, Webb built the school through the support of many of the most influential business leaders in the greater Los Angeles community including the Chandlers, Guggenheims, Boeings and many others.
As the number of students grew in the ’30s and ’40s, Webb added seven major buildings, five faculty homes and two smaller structures to the campus. During this time, two of Webb’s landmark buildings were constructed: Thomas Jackson Library and the Vivian Webb Chapel.
Thomas Jackson graduated from Webb in 1930. After graduation, he attended the California Institute of Technology, but in his sophomore year died of a heart attack. His parents gave Webb the library, dedicated in 1938, as a memorial to their son.
The library, now a formal reception room, was designed by acclaimed architect Myron Hunt, who also built the Rose Bowl and Thompson and Vivian’s campus home (now occupied by the office of admission). The building won an award for its architecture – a Mediterranean style with small balconies on the second floor and a mezzanine balcony around the interior – almost immediately after its dedication. From 1937 to 1948, Vivian Webb helped each graduating senior design and carve a wooden plaque bearing his name, his graduating year and some symbol of his interest. These plaques line the library’s walls. On the library’s heavy oak doors, Vivian Webb herself carved the names of the 158 boys who graduated before 1937.
Construction on the Vivian Webb Chapel, a monument to Thompson Webb’s religious faith and his love for his wife, began the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thompson was fascinated by California missions and took the mission at San Juan Capistrano as the inspiration for his chapel. With the help of a small cement mixer and two hired workers, Thompson began making 60-pound adobe bricks. After turning out 60,000 mission-style bricks and drying them in the sun on the school’s tennis courts, he built the chapel’s foundation and laid the chapel’s first brick in 1939. With the help of students, parents, visitors, prospective students and even the governor of Tennessee, Thompson Webb built the walls of the chapel.
Near completion of the structure, Webb learned that renowned sculptor Alec Miller was in the United States (because of World War II) without funds to return to his native Scotland. Miller was well-known in England because of his carvings for the cathedral at Coventry. Webb hired the artist at a modest fee, plus room and board, to design the furnishings (Miller called them “fitments”) for the chapel. Miller lived with the Webbs for three years while he designed the chapel’s “fitments” and the insets for the chapel’s entrance doors. Except for the bell tower which was added later, the chapel was completed in 1944.
In the late 1950s, the Webb family turned the school over to a non-profit corporation to help ensure the school’s fiscal future. Prior to this, the school had been run as a family-owned stock company. When the non-profit corporation was established, Thompson Webb continued as headmaster of the school and Vivian Webb as general housemother. They continued in these capacities at Webb until 1962 when both retired after 40 years of dedicated service. (Vivian Webb passed away in 1971; her husband died four years later in 1975.)
[edit] The Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology
The late ’30s saw another pivotal moment in The Webb Schools’ history. In 1937, biology teacher Raymond M. Alf took his class on a camping trip to Barstow. Bill Webb, Thompson Webb’s son, was one of the students on that trip.
Bored with the entire experience, he spotted an eroded hillside he thought would make a terrific slide; halfway down he hooked and tore his pants on a sharp protruding object. Climbing back to the spot, Webb found a bone sticking out from the ground. After clearing away some dirt, he uncovered teeth and eventually a small skull.
Webb and Alf excavated the skull and took it to a paleontologist at the California Institute of Technology. The find turned out to be a new species of fossil pig or peccary. That find inspired a passion in Webb students that led to regular fossil trips and more finds. As the adventures and acquisitions grew in size, Alf and his students created a small museum in the basement of Jackson Library. By 1968, this “museum” turned into its own campus building, designed by renowned California artist Millard sheets: the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology.
The self-touring world-class museum houses fossils collected by Webb students. Today, in addition to being the only accredited museum in the country on a secondary school campus, the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology is home to one of the premier collections of fossil footprints in the world, a dinosaur egg and a recently-discovered rhinoceros skull, as well as the original peccary skull that started it almost 70 years ago.
[edit] Vivian Webb School
The concept of a girls’ school on the Webb campus came up for discussion in the early ’80s. After the private Claremont Girls Collegiate closed, a group of Claremont parents led a campaign and persuaded the board of trustees to establish a girls’ school on the Webb campus and the Vivian Webb School concept was born.
In the fall of 1981, Vivian Webb School opened with 34 girls. Amidst the company of 200 boys, these young women stood out as the new kids on the block and called themselves “pioneers.” Four years later, Vivian Webb School admitted its first class of boarders - 34 students. And the numbers grew annually.
Since its inception, classes for freshmen and sophomores at Vivian Webb School were mostly single-sex. Over the years, the capacity to offer single-sex classes in a co-educational setting has become one of the hallmarks and strengths of The Webb Schools.
[edit] Honor Code
When Webb School of California was founded, an honor code was established which in essence declares that Webb students agree to not bring disgrace on the school, themselves or the rest of the student body by committing an act of dishonesty or cowardice. The Honor Code is not simply a list of rules, but rather, a revered expression o the school’s fundamental values. It fosters a community of honesty, trust, courage, moral responsibility and mutual respect.
[edit] The Webb Schools Today
Webb’s campus bears little physical resemblance to “The Farm” of 1922. Among the 70 acres are a buildings set in a heavily planted hillside. On the lower part of campus, visitors will find the “plaza group” consisting of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, the W. Russell Fawcett Library, classrooms, an auditorium, the Price Dining Hall, the administration building, and the Frederick R. Hooper Student Center. Among these buildings is one remaining original: a clapboard structure built in 1917, simply called the “School House.”
Just east of the plaza is the house the Webb family occupied for years, a girl’s dormitory and the Thomas Jackson Library. Up the hill are dorms, an Olympic-size pool, and Chandler Field, one of four large playing fields at Webb. Further up the hill are the health center, the Vivian Webb Chapel, which sits atop its own knoll, additional dormitories, tennis courts, and faculty houses. At the top of the hill is the Les Perry Gymnasium, McCarthy Fitness Center, Faculty Field at the Mary Stuart Rogers Sports Center, and a cross-country track course. A fully functional observatory sits just south of the football field.
Webb maintains a steady goal of educational excellence and balance for all students. Outdoor excursions and field trips have been a part of the Webb experience since the schools’ founding. At the freshman orientation retreat, students are not only introduced to each other and the schools’ traditions, but to basic camping and navigation skills in the Southern California mountains.
Located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, The Webb Schools offer an outstanding combination of rigorous academics and comprehensive extracurricular activities for students in grades 9-12.
