Lawrenceville School

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The Lawrenceville School
Image:Lawrenceville Seal.jpg
Virtus Semper Viridis
"Virtue Always Green"
Location
Lawrenceville, NJ, U.S.
Information
Religion None
Headmaster Elizabeth A. Duffy
Enrollment

804 total
549 boarding
255 day
Faculty 142
Average class size 12
Student:teacher ratio 6:1
Average SAT scores (2006) 650 verbal
680 math 670 writing
Type Private, Boarding
Campus 700 acres
Athletics 21 Interscholastic Sports
Mascot Big Red
Color(s) Red/Black
Established 1810

The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational, independent preparatory boarding school for grades 9-12 located on 700 acres in the historic community of Lawrenceville, in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, U.S. five miles southwest of Princeton. Today, the School enrolls 800 boarding and day students, who come from 37 states and 29 countries. As of June 30, 2006, its endowment was roughly $229 million, or nearly $290,000 per student.[1] As of 2008, its endowment was tied for twelfth in a ranking of 235 boarding schools.[2] Lawrenceville received 1,643 formal applications for entrance in fall 2006, of which only 348 — or 21% — were accepted. The School is a member of the G20 Schools group.

Contents

[edit] History

One of the oldest prep schools in the U.S., Lawrenceville was founded in 1810 as the Maidenhead Academy. As early as 1828, the school attracted students from Cuba and England, as well as from the Choctaw Nations. It went by several subsequent names, including the Lawrenceville Classical and Commercial High School, the Lawrenceville Academy, and the Lawrenceville Classical Academy, before the school's current name, "The Lawrenceville School," was set during its refounding in 1883.

In 1951, a group of educators from three of America's elite prep schools (Lawrenceville, Phillips Academy, and Phillips Exeter Academy) and three of the country's most prestigious colleges (Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University) convened to examine the best use of the final two years of high school and the first two years of college. This committee published a final report, General Education in School and College, through Harvard University Press in 1952, which subsequently led to the establishment of the Advanced Placement Program (the AP Exams).

Lawrenceville was featured in a number of novels by Owen Johnson, class of 1895, notably The Prodigious Hickey, The Tennessee Shad, and The Varmint (1910). The Varmint, which recounts the school years of the fictional character Dink Stover, was made into the 1950 motion picture The Happy Years which starred Leo G. Carroll and Dean Stockwell and was filmed on the Lawrenceville campus. A 1992 PBS miniseries was based on his Lawrenceville tales.

In 1959, Fidel Castro spoke at the School in the Edith Memorial Chapel. Recent speakers have included boxer Muhammad Ali, former president of Honduras and alumnus Ricardo Maduro, first female President of Ireland Mary Robinson, playwright Edward Albee, legal scholar Derrick Bell, poet Billy Collins, playwright Christopher Durang, historians Niall Ferguson and David Hackett Fischer, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, poet Seamus Heaney, political analyst Ariana Huffington, novelist Chang-rae Lee, photographer Andres Serrano, poet Mark Strand, writer Andrew Sullivan, politician Lowell Weicker, ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper, philosopher Cornel West, and actor Chevy Chase.

Among Lawrenceville's prominent teachers over the years have been Thornton Wilder, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author, who taught French at the School in the 1920s; R. Inslee Clark, Jr., who revolutionized Ivy League admissions at Yale in the 1960s; and Thomas H. Johnson, a widely-published authority on Emily Dickinson. Faculty members have gone on to head institutions such as the Horace Mann School, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Groton School, Milton Academy, Westminster School, the Peddie School, and Governor Dummer Academy.

Lawrenceville was all-male for much of its nearly 200-year history, until the board of trustees voted to make the School coeducational in 1985. The first girls were admitted in 1987. In 1999, the student body elected a female president, Alexandra Petrone; in 2003, Elizabeth Duffy was appointed the School's first female head master; and in 2005, Sasha-Mae Eccleston, class of 2002, became Lawrenceville's first alumna to win a Rhodes Scholarship.


The School's weekly newspaper, The Lawrence, has been in publication for 127 years. It has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence.[citation needed]

The Lit is the school's student run literary magazine first published in 1895 by Owen Johnson.

Lawrenceville will celebrate its bicentennial in 2010. The school is in the midst of a Bicentennial Campaign, with a fundraising goal of $200 Million by June 30, 2010. As of June 4, 2008 the campaign had already raised $120 Million toward its goal.

[edit] Geography and setting

Lawrenceville School sits across U.S. Route 206 or Main Street, from the center of Lawrenceville. The village has historically been active as a commercial center for students. The Jigger Shop was for decades one of the most popular student hang out, with a soda fountain and the school bookstore. The school assumed ownership of the store in the 1970's and after a 1990 fire, the Jigger shop moved from Main Street to an on-campus location.[3] The village's pizza parlor TJ's remains a popular off-campus spot for students. The ice cream store Peggy Sue's, cafe Fedora's, and the Maidenhead bagel shop also serve as popular hang out locations for students.

Along Lewisville Road at the back entrance of the school is the site of Lewisville, a small, largely African American community, many of whose residents historically worked as staff at the school.[citation needed]

The school includes a golf course, and owns much of the land to its east, which is covenanted as Green Space under New Jersey state law.

Lawrenceville sits midway between Trenton and Princeton, and has a strong historical connection to Princeton University.



Among Lawrenceville's most distinctive features is its house system common to British boarding schools. Students reside in three distinct groups of houses (or dorms), where they live with faculty members in a family-like setting: the Lower School, the Circle and Crescent Houses, and the Upper School. Freshmen, or 9th grade IInd formers (the school stopped accepting 8th grade Ist formers in 1997), stay in two dorms, one for boys (Raymond) and one for girls (Dawes). For their sophomore IIIrd and IVth form year, students are placed either into the Circle (for boys) or the Crescent (for girls) Houses. The "Circle Houses" are named for their location on a landscaped circle designed by the 19th-century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who is most famous for designing New York City's Central Park. The Circle is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The "Crescent Houses" are similarly named after the layout of the buildings. Circle/Crescent houses, which field intramural sports teams, have their own traditions, and participate in friendly, though intense, competition. Circle houses are Kennedy, Hamill, Dickinson, Woodhull, Griswold and Cleve. Crescent houses are McClellan, Stanley, Stephens, and Kirby. Plans to build a new Crescent house, to be called Carter, are underway. Seniors (the Vth Form) live in separate dormitories off the Circle and Crescent. Some seniors live as prefects with underclassmen.

Like the House system, the Harkness table is a hallmark of the School. In the Harkness method, teachers and students engage in Socratic, give-and-take discussions around large, wooden oval tables, which take the place of individual desks.

Additionally the school prides itself for its use of consultations. Every whole day of school students have a period within the day, 30 minutes long, to go to their teachers classroom and ask them for personalized help. This is with the exception of Tuesday where the 'Consulation' period is used by the All-School Meeting.

This was, however, altered by the implementation of a new schedule. During an academic week with the current schedule there are 3 consultations a week, on Monday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. The reason for this was the lengthening of classes from 45 to 55 minutes. Also the addition of a double period "X" period for each class at least once a week, called for the elimination of consults.

[edit] Athletics

House Football: Griswold vs. Woodhull
House Football: Griswold vs. Woodhull

Lawrenceville's arch-rival in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League is The Hill School of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. On the first or second weekend of November during "Hill Weekend," the two schools celebrate the nation's third oldest high school football rivalry and fifth oldest school rivalry in the nation, dating back to 1887.[4] Also famous is the annual golf competition for the Crooked Stick, similar in format to the Ryder Cup.

Lawrenceville competes with other schools in baseball, basketball, crew, cross-country, fencing, field hockey, football, golf, hockey, indoor and outdoor track, lacrosse, soccer, softball, squash, swimming, tennis, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling. In addition, the School offers a variety of intramural sports, including Ultimate (sport) for the girls' Crescent Houses and 8-man tackle football for boys' Circle Houses.

Lawrenceville's House Football League is the oldest active football league in America. Teams compete against each other to battle for the pride of their house. Traditions abound, including the yearly rivalry game between the Hamill and Kennedy houses referred to as "The Crutch Game," first played in 1947. The game is fought for the possession of a historical crutch made of wood. The most recent renewal of this tradition, the 60th anniversary of the Crutch game, resulted in a 39-6 victory for the Hamill house.

A bit of Lawrenceville football lore is recounted in the book Football Days, Memories of the Game and of the Men Behind the Ball by William H. Edwards, a graduate of Lawrenceville. The book describes the author's time as a member of the Lawrenceville football team, and paints a vivid picture of "the vital power of the collegial spirit."

Notable Recent Interscholastic Achievements:

On November 6, 2005, the Lawrenceville Varsity Field Hockey team defeated Stuart Country Day School 2-1 to capture their third straight Prep A State Championship. On November 5, 2006, the Field Hockey team defeated Stuart Country Day School 1-0 to capture their fourth straight Prep A State Championship.

On February 12, 2006, the Lawrenceville Varsity Boys' Squash team won the National Championship for the third year in a row.

On May 18, 2006, the Lawrenceville Varsity Baseball Team won the New Jersey State Prep A Championship over Peddie School in a double header (14-0 and 6-1), marking their second state championship in three years.

In 2006, Lawrenceville graduate Joakim Noah competed as a member of the University of Florida Gators' back-to-back NCAA-championship winning basketball team in 2006 and 2007. Noah was voted the most outstanding player of the Final Four in 2006.

[edit] Facilities

Memorial Hall, the center for English studies on the campus of The Lawrenceville School
Memorial Hall, the center for English studies on the campus of The Lawrenceville School
Edith Memorial Chapel
Edith Memorial Chapel

On Lawrenceville's 700-acre campus are thirty-four major buildings, including the Bunn Library (with space for 100,000 volumes). Peabody and Stearns designed the original campus of the school, which included Memorial Hall, a gymnasium, the headmaster’s house and five cottage-style residences, and provided future plans for the chapel.[5]

Opened in 1996, the Bunn Library offers more than 50,000 books, computer research facilities, an electronic classroom, study areas and an archives. Other campus highlights include a 56,000-square-foot science building (opened in spring 1998), a visual arts center (opened in fall 1998), a history center (reopened in fall 1999), and a music center (opened in fall 2000).

In the main arena of the Edward J. Lavino Field House are a permanent banked 200-meter track and three tennis/basketball/volleyball courts. Two additional hardwood basketball courts, a six-lane swimming pool, an indoor ice-hockey rink, a wrestling room, two fitness centers with a full-time strength and conditioning coaches, and a training-wellness facility are housed in the wings of the building as well as a new squash court facility, hosting ten new internationally zoned courts, which opened in 2003.

The four Crescent House Dorms, designed by Short and Ford Architects, of Princeton, NJ, were opened in 1986.

Lawrenceville has eighteen athletics fields, a nine-hole golf course, twelve outdoor tennis courts, a ¼-mile all-weather track, a boathouse, and a ropes and mountaineering course. During the summer, Lawrenceville is a popular site for sports-specific camps for youths, as well as several academic programs for students and teachers.

[edit] Affiliations

As discussed above, Lawrenceville athletics compete in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League.

Lawrenceville is part of an organization known as The Ten Schools Admissions Organization. This organization was founded more than forty years ago on the basis of a number of common goals and traditions. Member schools include Lawrenceville, Choate Rosemary Hall, Deerfield Academy, The Hill School, The Taft School, The Hotchkiss School, St. Paul's School, Loomis Chaffee, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Phillips Academy Andover.

Lawrenceville is affiliated with The Island School - Cape Eleuthera, The Bahamas

[edit] Gallery

The Bunn Library

The Lavino Fieldhouse, home of Big Red athletics

Father's Hall (Languages) and the Mackenzie Building (Admissions)

Dawes House on the Bowl


[edit] Notable Lawrentians

The following are some notable alumni of the Lawrenceville School.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1], Trustees of The Lawrenceville School, IRS Filing 990, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2006. Page 37.
  2. ^ Largest Endowments, Boarding School Review. Accessed September 20, 2007. This ranking listed the endowment at $200 million.
  3. ^ http://www.lawrenceville.org/parents/jiggershop.asp
  4. ^ Ross, Rosemarie. "Hill ends season with key victory", Mercury (Pennsylvania), November 13, 2005. Accessed October 31, 2007. "In the game that annually means the most to them, it was near total Blues dominance as visiting Hill routed arch rival Lawrenceville, 41-18, Saturday to take home the silver trophy bowl for the second straight year. This was their 103rd showdown in a rivalry that started in 1887."
  5. ^ http://www.peabodyandstearns.com/schools1.html
  6. ^ http://www2.lawrenceville.org/alumni/association/recognition.asp accessed 5 December 2006
  7. ^ George Akerlof: Nobel Prize Autobiography, accessed April 2, 2007. "The Princeton Country Day School ended at grade nine. At that point most of my classmates dispersed among different New England prep schools. Both for financial reasons and also because they preferred that I stay at home, my family sent me down the road to the Lawrenceville School."
  8. ^ Slaymaker, S.R. II. Five Miles Away: The Story of The Lawrenceville School. Lawrenceville, NJ: 1985.
  9. ^ David Baird, Jr., Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed August 26, 2007.
  10. ^ Dierks Bentley ’93 Wins CMA Horizon Award, Lawrenceville School, November 16, 2005. Accessed September 30, 2007.
  11. ^ George Houston Brown, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed September 1, 2007.
  12. ^ a b Gussow, Mel. "James Merrill Is Dead at 68; Elegant Poet of Love and Loss", The New York Times, February 7, 1995. Accessed October 31, 2007. "He went to Lawrenceville School, where one of his close friends and classmates was the novelist Frederick Buechner."
  13. ^ "Major Sir Hamish Forbes, Bt: Champion of Highland and Gaelic culture who as a wartime PoW had been decorated for his numerous escape attempts", The Times, September 20, 2007. Accessed October 24, 2007. "Hamish Stewart Forbes was educated at Eton, at Lawrenceville in the United States and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London."
  14. ^ James, George. "Malcolm Forbes, Publisher, Dies at 70", The New York Times, February 26, 1990. Accessed October 24, 2007. "Young Forbes attended the Lawrenceville School and Princeton University, where he majored in politics and economics."
  15. ^ "Frank Is Unanimous Selection As Yale's 1937 Football Leader; Star Halfback, Kelley and Pond Are Among Speakers at Dinner, After Which Eli Gridiron Squad Disbands -- Williams Wins the Managerial Competition, With Wickwire Next.", The New York Times, November 24, 1936.
  16. ^ "Court Voice Of Reaganism Charles Fried", The New York Times October 24, 1985. p. 9
  17. ^ Huey Lewis profile, Back to the Future, accessed December 26, 2006.
  18. ^ Clement Woodnutt Miller, United States Congress. Accessed June 2, 2007.
  19. ^ Rodman McCamley Price, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed September 24, 2007.
  20. ^ Lowell Palmer Weicker, Jr., Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed December 16, 2007.

[edit] External links

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