FRIENDS SEMINARY

'Friends Seminary' is a private, Quaker school located in downtown Manhattan. It enrolls roughly 650 kindergarten through 12th grade students. The school is divided into three sections: Kindergarten through 4th grade (Lower School), 5th grade through 8th grade (Middle School) and 9th grade through 12 grade (Upper School).

Contents

History

Facilities

Notable alumni (alphabetical)

External links

History

Friends Seminary was founded in 1786 as Friends Institute. In 1826 the school was moved to a larger campus. The school again moved in 1860 to its current location and changed the name to Friends Seminary. In 1925 Friends Seminary was the first private co-educational school to hire a full time psychologist. Despite it's past reputation for being a diverse and philosophically open school (as opposed to its uptown rivals like Dalton, Collegiate, and Brearley), under the current administration of Robert "Bo" Lauder, a former Upper School Head at Sidwell Friends, and Upper School Head Wendy Wilderotter, the school has compromised its historic Quaker values in order to increase the stature and endowment of the school.

Facilities

The school is located in a number of buildings. The largest building is the ''1963 building'', where classes are held for the entire Middle School, most of the Lower School and some of the Upper School. The 1963 building contains a basement level gym, library and media center, a language lab, science labs, art studios, a photography dark room, computer labs, a music room and classrooms for Lower, Middle and Upper School students.
The school purchased and renovated a former Masonic Temple in 2001 and 2002. The new building, called "The Annex" incorporates Green technology to create a building with less of an ecological footprint than many other buildings in the city. The building includes more science labs, as well as three multi-use classrooms. The building houses the offices of the Upper School, as well as a theatre on the ground floor level.
The school is currently undergoing significant renovation.
This renovation is complete except for the elevator in the main building.

Notable alumni (alphabetical)

★ David Allee (photographer)

★ Noah Buschel (writer/director)

★ Caleb Carr (writer)

★ Wylie Dufresne (chef)

★ Bart Freundlich (director)

★ Zachary Glass (musician)

★ Georgia Hubley

★ Josh Isay (political consultant)

★ Matthew Lenski (director)

★ Nina Payne (poet/educator)

★ M. Scott Peck (writer)

★ Amanda Peet (actress)

★ John Reed (novelist)

★ William Robinson

★ Roger Rosenblatt (writer)

★ Liev Schreiber (actor)

★ Kyra Sedgwick (actress)

★ Amanda Stern (writer)

★ Julia Stiles (actress)

★ Anne Waldman (poet)

★ Vera Wang (designer)

★ Nat Wolff (actor/musician)

★ Alex Wolff (actor/musician)

★ Adam Yauch [1]

External links

★ The Friends Seminary Website