Phillips Academy

Phillips Academy (also known as Phillips Andover or P.A. or simply Andover) is a co-educational University preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. The school is located in Andover, Massachusetts, 25 miles north of Boston.

Phillips Academy is the second oldest (with The Governor's Academy being the oldest, established in 1763) continuously running incorporated boarding school in the United States , established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr. Phillips' uncle founded Phillips Exeter Academy three years later, starting a rivalry that has continued through the centuries.^[1] Phillips Academy's endowment stood around $787 million in January, 2008, the fourth-highest of any American secondary school.^[2]

The academy traditionally educated its students for Yale (and to a lesser extent, Harvard and Amherst),^[3] but students now matriculate to a wide range of colleges and universities. In recent years, Andover has sent the largest number of its students to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton University and other top-tier colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. [4] Among other notable alumni, Andover has educated two American Presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, NFL Head Coach Bill Belichick, Law and Order creator Dick Wolf, four Medal of Honor recipients, inventor Samuel Morse, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.. The Phillipian, the school's student-run newspaper, is one of the oldest secondary school newspaper in the US. Likewise, the Philomathean Society is also one of the earliest high school debate society in the nation, established in 1825.

The school's grading system, on a scale of zero to six, is rather unusual. The office of the dean of studies claims that there is no formal equivalent between the zero to six system and a conventional letter grade system. However, a six is considered outstanding and is (ideally) rarely awarded, a five is the lowest honors grade, and a two is the lowest passing grade. The School is a member of the G20 Schools group.

History

Phillips Academy was founded during the American Revolution as an all-boys school in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr., a member of the important revolutionary war family, the Phillips. The great seal of the school was designed by Paul Revere. George Washington spoke at the school in its first year and was so impressed that he recommended that his nephews go there, and they did. John Hancock, the famous signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, signed the school's articles of incorporation.

Phillips Academy's traditional rival is Phillips Exeter Academy, established three years later in Exeter, New Hampshire by Samuel Phillips' uncle, Dr. John Phillips. The football teams have met nearly every year since 1878, making it one of the oldest high school rivalries in the country.

Portions of Andover's campus were laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park and himself a graduate of the school. It is dominated by neo-Georgian architecture and centered around the several-acre Great Lawn. Campus structures include the Memorial Bell Tower, which recently underwent a $5 million renovation^[4], Samuel Phillips Hall, Bulfinch Hall, and Pearson Hall.

Paul Revere incorporated bees, a beehive, and the sun into his design of the school's seal. The school's primary motto, Non Sibi, located in the sun, means "not for oneself". The school's second motto, Finis Origine Pendet, meaning "the end depends upon the beginning," is scrolled across the bottom of the seal. Phillips Academy was chartered to educate "qualified youth from every quarter."

Phillips Academy offers a broad curriculum and extracurricular activities that include music ensembles, 30 competitive sports, a campus newspaper, a radio station, and a debate club. The academy raised $208 million through "Campaign Andover," which brought its endowment to around $550 million in 2004.^[5]

In 1973, Phillips Academy merged with neighboring Abbot Academy, which was founded in 1829 as the first school for girls in New England and named for Sarah Abbot.

Phillips Academy attained need-blind admissions in 2007.

In 2007, Phillips Academy matriculated 81% of its admitted students, a higher rate than any other ESA school, including Exeter.

Facilities

Academic facilities

Samuel Phillips Hall

Bulfinch Hall was designed by a student of architect Charles Bulfinch and built in 1819. It is now the English Department building.

The Gelb Science Center, named after wealthy alumnus Richard Gelb, opened for classes in January 2004. The center contains twenty laboratories, classrooms, seminar rooms, instrument rooms, preparatory areas, study-session spaces, and a rooftop astronomical observatory; it is the newest building on campus, having replaced the older Evans Hall which was built in 1963 and demolished following the completion of Gelb. ^[6]

Graham House is used by both the school's Psychology Department and the school's psychological counselors.

Morse Hall is home to the Math Department, student publications, CAMD (Community and Multicultural Development), and WPAA — a student run radio station. Morse Hall is named after Samuel Morse, who graduated from Phillips Academy in 1805 and later invented the telegraph and Morse code.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL) takes its namesake from the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., an 1825 graduate of Phillips Academy. The library houses 140,000 books, the Phillips Academy Computer Center (PACC), a video library, and subscriptions to roughly 250 periodicals in print, and access to many thousands of titles electronically.

Samuel Phillips Hall was built in 1924 and named after the founder of the school. This building houses the World Languages Department and the History and Social Sciences Department, as well as the "Language Learning Center," a computer lab with video, audio, and programs designed to supplement classroom work in language classes.

Pearson Hall, one of the oldest structures on campus, is the classics building. The only subjects with classes that meet in Pearson are Latin, Greek, Greek literature, mythology, and etymology. It was named after the school's first headmaster, Eliphalet Pearson. The Board of Trustees recently announced that Pearson might turn into a Community Center, but the plan has since been put on hold due to a strong response from students, faculty, and alumni.

Student Life Facilities

Cochran Chapel is a neo-Georgian church located on the north side of campus, and is the center of religious life on campus for students and faculty. It is also home to the Department of Religion and Philosophy, and to the Community Service Program. The Chapel hosts many concerts, lectures and gatherings throughout the year, and a weekly All School Meeting is held here on Wednesdays.

Commons is the school's dining hall. It has four large dining rooms along with three smaller rooms, which may be utilized by classes or speakers for eating in a more personal environment. Students are often intensely loyal to specific dining rooms--lower left, lower right, upper left, and upper right. Commons also houses the Ryley Room, a grill-style student hangout, in the basement of Commons. Both Commons and the Ryley Room are currently under renovation, scheduled for completion in early 2009. The temporary dining facility, Uncommons, is located inside the Sumner Smith Hockey Rink. One concern during the decision to renovate Commons was the issue of the original staircases throughout the building. Worn down from generations of students over the years, these "indented" stairs carried significant sentimental value for both current students and alumni. As a result, the original stairs will remain a permanent fixture in the new Commons.

George Washington Hall was built in 1926. The building serves numerous functions, including an administration building (Head of School's office, among others), a post-office (the student's mail room), and the school's arts complex (with the Elson Art Center, the Polk-Lillard Electronic Imaging and Audio-Visual Center, and both the Tang and Steinbach theaters).

Graves Hall is the music building, with classrooms, a concert hall, a record library, and practice studios.

The Log Cabin is located in the 125-acre (0.51 km²) forest on the northeastern edge of campus and serves as a place for student groups to hold meetings as well as sleep-overs.

Residential facilities

In addition to the above mentioned facilities, the school also includes a number of dormitories to serve the roughly 800 students that board. These buildings range in size from housing as few as four to as many as 40 students. Two notable dorms are America House, where the patriotic hymn America was penned^[7], and Stowe House, where American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) lived while her husband taught at the Andover Theological Seminary^[7]. Stowe is also buried on campus in a cemetery behind Samuel Phillips Hall^[8]. Several dorms are named after prominent alumni, such as Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War during WWII, and men instrumental in the founding of the Academy, such as Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. Shortly before his death in 1799, United States President George Washington gave a speech from a second floor window in Carriage House, now a dorm, to the citizens of Andover.

Museums at Phillips Academy

Winslow Homer's Eight Bells, part of the Addison Gallery's Permanent Collection

The Addison Gallery of American Art is an art museum given to the school by alumnus Thomas Cochran. It is widely considered one of the finest small museums in America and its last two directors have gone on to direct the Yale University Art Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Its permanent collection includes Winslow Homer's "Eight Bells," along with work by John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Thomas Eakins, James McNeill Whistler, Frederic Remington, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella and Andrew Wyeth. It was one of the first museums in America to seriously collect photography, and took an early and prescient interest in artists such as Carleton Watkins and Margaret Bourke-White, with the result that its photography collection is equal to some of the largest museums in America. Another strength is in decorative arts, with silver and furniture dating back to pre-colonial America, and a fine collection of colonial model ships. A rotating schedule of exhibitions, including current ones of William Wegman and Southworth and Hawes, is open to students and the public alike. In the spring of 2006, the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees approved a $30 million campaign to renovate and expand the Addison Gallery.^[9] Construction on the Addison began in the middle of 2008 and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2010.^[10] During this period, the Addison Gallery will be closed to the public.^[11]

The Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archeology was founded in 1901 and is now "one of the nation's major repositories of Native American archaeological collections." The collection includes materials from the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, Mexico and the Arctic, and range from Paleo Indian (10,000+ years ago) to the present day. Since the early 1990s, the museum has been at the forefront of compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It currently serves as an educational museum for the students of Phillips Academy, but is also accessible to researchers, public schools and visitors by appointment.

Athletics

History of Athletics at Andover

Athletic competition has long been a part of Phillips Academy tradition. As early as 1805, football was being played on school grounds, according to a letter that Henry Pearson wrote his father, Eliphalet Pearson in 1805, saying, “I cannot write a long letter as I am very tired after having played at football all this afternoon.” ^[12] The first ever interscholastic football game between high schools was in 1875, when Phillips Academy played against Adams Academy. ^[13] One of the oldest schoolboy rivalries in American football is the Andover/Exeter competition, started in 1878. That year, the first Andover/Exeter baseball game took place, and the first edition of The Phillipian was published. ^[14]

Current Athletics

Today, Phillips Academy is an athletic powerhouse among New England schools. Since the Constitution of the Phillips Academy Athletic Association was drawn up in 1903 with the objective of “Athletics for All”^[15], Andover has established twenty-nine different interscholastic programs, and forty-four intramural or instructional programs, including fencing, tai-chi, figure skating, and yoga. [5]. Andover Athletes have been successful in winning over 110 New England Championships in these different sports over the last three decades alone [6], and have even had the chance to compete abroad, in such competitions as the Henley Royal Regatta in Henley, England for crew [7]. As a way to encourage all students to try new things and stay healthy, all students are required to have an athletic commitment every term. A range of instructional sports are available for those who wish to try new things, and for those already established in a sport, each team has at least a varsity and junior varsity squad.

Andover Athletic Offerings

[8][9]

Table of Recent New England Championship Titles, By Sport

^[16]

Phillips Academy in Literature

• In chapter 17 of the Catcher in the Rye, Sally Hayes introduces Holden to a boy who "reeked of Andover and Yale."
• In the John Guare play Six Degrees of Separation, one of the characters laments that his parents could not afford to send him to Andover or Exeter.
• In Eloise, the six year old's tutor is said to have attended Andover.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic This Side of Paradise has several characters who attended Andover.

Summer Session

Andover runs a five week Summer Session program for students entering grades 8-12 which is attended by about six hundred students per year. The program offers academic courses in subjects such as English, foreign language, science, and history. Students must also attend afternoon activities such as gospel choir, badminton, and soccer. Tuition is $6200, and financial aid is available on a limited basis. Younger students, or those entering grades 8, have the option to take three classes while older students may take more. About half of the Summer Session teachers are Andover faculty.

Notable Alumni

Phillips Academy has a number of notable alumni. Some of these alumni include Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Executive Director and Creator of Law & Order Dick Wolf, NFL Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick, late actors Humphrey Bogart and Jack Lemmon, Archaeologist, discoverer of Machu Picchu, and inspiration for Indiana Jones Hiram Bingham III, Peace Activist and Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, American photographer Walker Evans, former MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Jim Henson Productions Brian Henson, Publisher John F. Kennedy Jr., Architect and Designer of Central Park Frederick Law Olmsted, Founder of Jane Magazine Jane Pratt, pediatrician Benjamin Spock, manufacturer of Wrigley's Gum Philip Wrigley, and Morse Code inventor Samuel Morse. To see the full list of notable alumni, click below.

• List of famous Phillips Academy alumni

References

External links

• Phillips Academy home page
• Boarding School Profile: Phillips Academy Andover
• A History of Andover - From andoverma.gov
• The Phillipian
• WPAA
• Andover Crew
• Andover Summer Session
• Secondary Private Boarding School Information
• Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology
• The Drama Lab- Phillips Academy Student Theatre