Lawrenceville School

Lawrenceville School

Encyclopedia

Tutorials

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Directory

Email this to a friend Lawrenceville_School

Lawrenceville School

The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational, independent preparatory boarding school for grades 9-12 located on in the historic community of Lawrenceville, in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, U.S. five miles (8 km) 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. Lawrenceville is a member of the G20 Schools group, in addition to the Ten Schools Admissions Organization.

History
Geography and setting
Athletics
Facilities
Affiliations
Gallery
Notable Lawrentians
References
External links

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. An 18 acre area of the campus built then, including numerous buildings, has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark District, known as Lawrenceville School National Historic Landmark. A newer portion of the campus, not intruding into that district, was built in the 1920s.

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, physicist Brian Greene, 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, Riverdale Country Day 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.

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.

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 1970s 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.

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.

Athletics

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:

In the spring of 2008, the Lawrenceville Boy's Varsity Track & Field team completed its season undefeated, placing first in the NJISSAA and MAPL leagues.

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.

Facilities

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

Edith Memorial Chapel

On Lawrenceville's 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 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 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 �-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, including the prestigious New Jersey Scholars Program.

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

Gallery

<gallery> Image:BunnLibrary.JPG|The Bunn Library Image:Lavino.JPG|The Lavino Fieldhouse, home of Big Red athletics Image:PopHall.JPG|Father's Building (Languages) and the Mackenzie Building (Admissions) Image:Dawes.JPG|Dawes House on the Bowl </gallery>