LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL

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 34 states and 29 countries. Its endowment stands at $225 million (as of 2005), or nearly $300,000 per student. Lawrenceville received 1,643 formal applications for entrance in fall 2006, of which only 348 — or 21% — were accepted.

Contents

History

Educational program

Athletics

Facilities

Affiliations

The House System

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.
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, 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, and philosopher Cornel West.
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.
''The Lit'' is the school's student run literary magazine first published in 1895 by Owen Johnson.
Lawrenceville will celebrate its bicentennial in 2010.

Educational program

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 two periods within the day, one 45 minutes long and the other 30, to go to their teachers classroom and ask them for personalized help. This is with the exception of Tuesday where one of these consulations is used by all-school meeting.

Athletics

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 the 1890s. 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.
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.
In 2006, the Dickinson House won the Foresman Trophy, annually awarded to the most athletically outstanding boys' circle house.
In Spring of 2007, the Woodhull House claimed the Foresman Trophy. Despite having 5 less people than other circle houses, Woodhull's balance between the interscholastic and intramural sports led them to victory. The Kirby House, for the second year in a row, claimed the Dresdner Cup.

Facilities

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.^[1]
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.
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.

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

The House System

Lawrenceville is notable for its house system, consisting of 19 houses. Four of these houses are for II formers, 10 for III and IV formers (the Circle and Crescent houses) and 5 houses for V formers. Despite being placed in different houses the II and V form year, many Lawrentians form close bonds with their Circle and Crescent house.
The Circle houses, for boys, are six houses, Hamill[1], Kennedy, Woodhull, Griswold, Cleve and Dickinson.
The girls have four Crescent houses, Stephens, Stanley, Kirby and McClellan.

Notable Lawrentians

The following are some notable alumni of the Lawrenceville School.^[2]

★ George Akerlof '58 - Nobel Laureate for Economics.^[3]

★ Dewey F. Bartlett '38 - Former Governor of Oklahoma^[4]

★ Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud - Saudi Arabia's ambassador to United States

★ Garth Ancier - President of the WB Network

★ David Baird, Jr. 1899 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey.^[5]

★ Dierks Bentley '93 - Country Music Singer
Notable current and former residents of Lawrence Township include:

★ George H. Brown c. 1828 - represented in the United States House of Representatives from 1853 to 1855.^[6]

★ Frederick Buechner '46 - Novelist

★ Fox Butterfield '57 - Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist for ''The New York Times''

★ Jay Carney - TIME Washington Bureau Chief and former White House correspondent

★ Richard Dean - Fashion and advertising photographer, model, and former player in Canadian Football League

★ Michael Eisner '60 - Former CEO of The Walt Disney Company

★ Peter Elkind - Fortune magazine writer and co-author of ''

★ E.D. Etherinton '43 - Former President of Wesleyan University and the American Stock Exchange

★ Maurice Ferre - Former Mayor of the city of Miami (1973-1985). Currently a fellow at Princeton University.

★ Malcolm Forbes - Publisher

★ Charles Fried - Harvard Law School professor and former United States Solicitor General.^[7]

★ George Gallup - Pollster

★ Robert F. Goheen '36 - The 16th President of Princeton University and former U.S. Ambassador to India

★ John Gutfreund - Former CEO of Salomon Brothers

★ Armond Hill - Former NBA player (Atlanta Hawks)

★ Owen Johnson 1895 - Author of the "Lawrenceville Stories"

★ Peter Lawson-Johnston '45 - Chairman of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

★ Aldo Leopold 1905 - Father of Ecology, author of A Sand County Almanac

★ Mike Lepore '05 - Basketball Player, Wake Forest University

★ Huey Lewis - Musician.^[8]

★ Ricardo Maduro '63 - Former President of Honduras

★ Reginald Marsh - Painter

★ William Masters - Human sexuality researcher and co-founder of the Masters & Johnson Institute

★ Harold W. McGraw, Jr. - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, McGraw-Hill Companies

★ James Merrill '43 - Poet

★ Clement Woodnutt Miller, U.S. Representative from California.^[9]

★ Craig Moore '05 - Current basketball star at Northwestern

★ Paul Moravec, Jr - 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music-winning composer

★ Geoff Morrell - White House correspondent for ABC News

★ Joakim Noah - Current basketball player for Chicago Bulls

★ Jarvis Offutt - American World War I aviator, namesake of Offutt Air Force Base

★ Bob Ryan - ''Boston Globe'' sportswriter and ESPN analyst/contributor

★ Hugh L. Scott 1869 - Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff and Superintendent of West Point

★ Nicholas 'Nicky' Sutton '06 - Basketball Player, Duke University

★ Brandon Tartikoff - Former NBC programming chief

★ Raleigh Warner '41 - Former Chairman and CEO of Mobil

★ Lowll Weicker - Governor of Connecticut and United States Senator

★ James Harvie Wilkinson III - United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit and oft-mentioned prospective Supreme Court of the United States nominee

★ Welly Yang '90 - actor

★ Taki Theodoracopulos - International journalist

★ Tinsley Mortimer - Manhattan socialite and handbag designer

References

1. http://www.peabodyandstearns.com/schools1.html
2. http://www2.lawrenceville.org/alumni/association/recognition.asp accessed 5 December 2006
3. 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."
4. Slaymaker, S.R. II. Five Miles Away: The Story of The Lawrenceville School. Lawrenceville, NJ: 1985.
5. David Baird, Jr., ''Biographical Directory of the United States Congress''. Accessed August 26, 2007.
6. George Houston Brown, ''Biographical Directory of the United States Congress''. Accessed September 1, 2007.
7. "Court Voice Of Reaganism Charles Fried", ''The New York Times'' October 24, 1985. p. 9
8. Huey Lewis profile, ''Back to the Future'', accessed December 26, 2006.
9. Clement Woodnutt Miller, United States Congress. Accessed June 2, 2007.

External links

★ Lawrenceville School website

★ Boarding School Review

★ Lawrenceville School Music program

★ Lawrenceville School Theatre and Dance programs

★ National Center for Education Statistics data for the Lawrenceville School