Moses Brown School

Moses Brown

Original building of the Moses Brown School campus, ca.1819
Location
Providence, Rhode Island
United States
Coordinates

41°49′59.2″N 71°23′54.36″W / 41.833111°N 71.3984333°W / 41.833111; -71.3984333Coordinates: 41°49′59.2″N 71°23′54.36″W / 41.833111°N 71.3984333°W / 41.833111; -71.3984333

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Information
Type Private
Religious affiliation(s) Quaker
Established 1784
Head of school Matt Glendinning
Faculty 216
Enrollment 771 total
Average class size 11 to 15 students
Student to teacher ratio 8:1
Campus Urban, 33 acres (130,000 m2)
Color(s) White and Navy Blue
Athletics 30 sports
Mascot Quaker
Average SAT scores Math - 750, Writing - 780, Reading - 720
Website

www.mosesbrown.org

Moses Brown School
Location 250 Lloyd Avenue
Providence, Rhode Island
Area 30 acres (12 ha)
Built 1819
Architect Greene, John Holden; Brown, Joseph
Architectural style Colonial Revival, Second Empire
NRHP Reference # 80000088[1]
Added to NRHP July 24, 1980

The Moses Brown School is a Quaker school located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. The school was founded in 1784 by Moses Brown, a Quaker abolitionist. It is one of the oldest preparatory schools in the United States.[2] The school motto is “For the Honor of Truth” and the school song is "Beneath the Elms" a reference to the large grove of elm trees that still surrounds the school to this day.[3]

Founder

Moses Brown (1738–1836) was a member of the Brown family, a powerful mercantile family of New England, a co-founder of Brown University, and a New England abolitionist and industrialist. He went on to become a pioneering advocate of abolition of slavery in the United States while starting the Moses Brown School.

History

First meeting place of the school from 1784-88 in the Portsmouth Friends Meeting House

In 1777 a committee of New England Yearly Meeting took up the idea for a school to educate young Quakers in New England. The committee, which included Moses Brown, was part of an effort within Quakerdom to promote their faith to the next generation. Brown wanted to ensure that when they reached adulthood they would be able to make a living.

The school opened in 1784 at Portsmouth Friends Meeting House in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, which was the administrative center for Yearly Meeting, and which had historically been heavily Quaker. However, by the 1780s it was an isolated location, and in the years after the American Revolution it was difficult to recruit both students and teachers. Four years later the Yearly Meeting decided to close the school "for one year" in June 1788; the school remained closed for over three decades.[4]

During those years, Moses Brown worked to restart the school, and, as treasurer of the school fund, was able to convince the Yearly Meeting to reopen the school – in part by donating a portion of his farm located in Providence for the school to be built on.

The school reopened in 1819 in Providence under the name "The New England Yearly Meeting Boarding School." Moses Brown then joined with his son Obadiah and his son-in-law William Almy to pay for the construction of the first building, which still serves as the main building of the school. Obadiah Brown also left $100,000 (equivalent to $1.55 million in 2015) in his will to the school, a sum unheard of at the time for a school endowment or gift. In 1904 the school was renamed "Moses Brown School" to honor its benefactor and advocate. It offered an "upper" and "lower" school for "younger boys".[5]

As the Quakers were early advocates of gender equality, Moses Brown School was a co-educational school. However, in 1926 it became a boys-only school as was the fashion in U.S. society at the time. As attitudes again became more liberal, it again became coed in 1976. Well-known faculty over the years included the twin Quaker educators Alfred and Albert Smiley in the mid-Nineteenth Century[6] and noted children's author Scott Corbett in the 1960s. "Moses Brown School: A History of its Third Half-Century" by Bill Paxton, covers the school's history during the period 1919-1969.[7]

As of 2013 the school was owned by New England Yearly Meeting, with its own Board of Overseers, and operated independently of the yearly meeting. The school was examining the possibility of changing its specific affiliation while still retaining its identity as a Quaker school.

Academics

Ninth and tenth graders are offered limited flexibility in their courses, aiming to expose them to a varied selection of topics. Juniors and Seniors, however, are much freer to flexibly select electives and other such courses. English is the only subject mandated through four years in the Upper School. Students must complete at least rrecalculus in order to satisfy their mathematics requirement, study a single language for three years, and lab sciences for two. There is a requirement for a comparative religions class. Students are also required to take a minimum of two semesters of fine art classes. In addition the cornerstone Co-Curricular program remains a of the Moses Brown experience. Students are required to participate in varied school activities whether athletic, theater, dance, or community service.[3]

Facilities

Notable alumni

See also

References

  1. ↑ National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ "History". mosesbrown.org. Moses Brown School. Archived from the original on 2 Nov 2005. Retrieved 28 Nov 2016 – via web.archive.org.
  3. 1 2 "MB at-a-glance". mosesbrown.org. Moses Brown School. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
  4. ↑ Kelsey, Rayner Wickersham (1919). Centennial history of Moses Brown school, 1819-1919. Moses Brown School. p. 50. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
  5. ↑ "Moses Brown School". The Independent. New York City. 6 Jul 1914. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
  6. ↑ Tyler, Betty (21 Mar 2009). "Smiley twins: the early years". Redlands Daily Facts. Redlands, California: Digital First Media. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
  7. ↑ "Moses Brown School;: A history of its third half-century, 1919-1969". amazon.com. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
  8. ↑ "A History of Swan Point Cemetery". lahistoryarchive.org. Swan Point Cemetery. Retrieved 26 Mar 2014.
  9. ↑ Vincent "Buddy Cianci", Jr., David Fisher, Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Dined with Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community, and Lived to Tell the Tale pg. 10
  10. ↑ Moses Brown School: "More than two thousand members of the MB community were on campus Oct. 17-19 for MB Expo, a celebration of play, passion and purpose" retrieved May 26, 2014
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