19th century The Lawrenceville School was founded in 1810 as the
Maidenhead Academy by
Presbyterian clergyman
Isaac Van Arsdale Brown. One of the oldest
preparatory schools in the United States, it has had several names, including
Lawrenceville Classical and Commercial High School and
Lawrenceville Academy. In 1883, the
John Cleve Green Foundation purchased the school from its aging headmaster
Samuel Hamill and renamed it
The Lawrenceville School. A merchant who amassed a large fortune investing in railroads, importing tea and textiles, and
exporting opium to China. The trustees of the Green Foundation, including Green's widow Sarah, brother Caleb, nephew Charles, and friend
John T. Nixon, aimed to turn Lawrenceville into a college-preparatory institution "with a more elite student body." With $1.25 million to spend (approximately $40 million in 2024 dollars), they hired Presbyterian minister
James Cameron Mackenzie to study the
public schools of the United Kingdom, and later appointed him Head of School. He argued that a "home-like atmosphere was better for an adolescent boy and made him a better student." The 1883 reorganization of Lawrenceville successfully elevated the school's profile and turned it into nearby
Princeton University's most reliable feeder school. Princeton president
James McCosh had been searching for a Mid-Atlantic alternative to New England boarding schools, which he thought funneled their best students to New England schools such as Harvard. He used John Cleve Green's fortune to fill this gap. Green had been one of Princeton's most important donors; Accordingly, the new Lawrenceville School was established "for the express purpose of preparing students for Princeton." Lawrenceville was a large success; the school sent 20 students to Princeton in 1886 alone, and enrollment leaped from 112 students in 1883 to 362 by 1898. The relaunch marked the start of a large boom in the American boarding school industry.
20th century In the 1940s, the school was considered by members of the American upper classes to be "very sophisticated and very cosmopolitan." In 1932, Lawrenceville sent 62 students to Princeton, nearly ten percent of the freshman class and more than the next two schools (
Phillips Exeter and
Mercersburg) put together. In the 1950s, the
College Entrance Examination Board tested an early version of today's
Advanced Placement program at Lawrenceville, Exeter, and
Andover, with input from Princeton as well as
Harvard and
Yale. In 1936, Lawrenceville adopted the
Harkness system of seminar-based classes.
Time magazine reported that
Edward Harkness offered the school "a blank check" to adopt his preferred system, which Exeter had previously adopted in 1930. When
Ivy League schools refocused their admissions practices on academic excellence in the 1950s and 1960s, the admissions director at
Yale University was
R. Inslee Clark Jr., a former Lawrenceville faculty member. Lawrenceville admitted its first African-American students, Lyals Battle '67 and Darell A. Fitzgerald '68, in 1964, one year after the longtime president of the board of trustees, an opponent of integration, stepped down. Upon their admission, the new board president remarked that Lawrenceville was the last major American boarding school to admit students of color. In 2024, the school renamed the atrium of the school gym (previously named for the earlier board president) to honor its first two black students. That year, 55% of the student body were classified as non-white. Lawrenceville began admitting girls in 1987. In 1999, the student body elected its first female student body president, Alexandra Petrone; in 2003, Elizabeth Duffy was appointed the School's first female headmaster; and in 2005,
Sasha-Mae Eccleston '02 became Lawrenceville's first alumna to win a
Rhodes Scholarship.
21st century In 2001,
The New York Times wrote that Lawrenceville was "[o]nce - and perhaps still - as much a symbol of the establishment as
Far Hills or the
Social Register," but was currently trying "to reinvent itself as an instrument of meritocracy rather than aristocracy." The school's admissions rate was 20.5% in the 2017-18 school year. Applications increased nearly 20% during the COVID-19 pandemic, "with part of the increase driven by Black applicants and families seeking financial aid." In 2010, Lawrenceville set the world record for the largest custard pie fight.
Heads of school , an early head of school Heads of school include: •
Isaac Van Arsdale Brown, 1810–1834 • Alexander Hamilton Phillips, 1834–1837 •
Samuel McClintock Hamill, 1837–1883 •
James Cameron Mackenzie, 1883–1899 • Simon John McPherson, 1899–1919 • Mather Almon Abbott, 1919–1934 • Allan Vanderhoef Heely, 1934–1959 • Bruce McClellan, 1959–1986 •
Josiah Bunting III, 1987–1995 • Philip Harding Jordan Jr., 1995–1996 • Michael Scott Cary, 1996–2003 • Elizabeth Anne Duffy, 2003–2015 • Stephen Sheals Murray, 2015–present == Tuition and financial aid ==