History

Owen Biddle published A Plan for School to encourage members of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to establish a boarding school for Quaker children modeled on Ackworth School, founded by the London Yearly Meeting in 1779.

The first students arrived in May 1799 – 20 boys and 20 girls, with more admitted monthly until there were about 200 in all. The school “family” lived and learned in this building designed by Philadelphia architect (and Quaker) David Evans, built with bricks made from clay on the farm. This watercolor, attributed to Abiah Baily, was drawn in 1803 or 1804.

Student Jeremiah Reynolds drew this mariner’s compass and wrote “Plain Sailing” principles on these pages in his exercise book that included his work in algebra and bookkeeping. The school’s curriculum, emphasizing useful skills and knowledge, also challenged him to create a technically correct navigator’s log for a voyage from England to the Island of Madeira, to solve and skillfully illustrate numerous problems in surveying, and to create a model accounts-journal for Westtown School from January 1

This 1840 painting by English painter John R. Smith reveals the fully enlarged Westtown schoolhouse as well as extensive beds, cold frames and arbor in the Boys’ Garden, in front of the building. Boys, girls and teachers could work in their gardens during leisure time, or take walks on paths near the school. Mr. Smith is also credited with introducing the game of cricket to Westtown faculty, a game that would later become a team sport at the school.

A new building was completed in 1869 to add classroom space for boys. First called “The New Building” and later, “Industrial Hall,” it has provided a gymnasium, a wood shop, chemistry and physics labs, a science museum, and even a boys’ dormitory when the original schoolhouse was taken down. This building achieved fame in 1885 when all of its 800 tons was slid 200 feet on lubricated wooden beams to make room for a wing of the new main building.

The first gathering of graduates was held in 1886, after the founding of the Westtown Alumni Association, open only to graduates of the school. The Westtown Old Scholars Association – for any former student – was organized in 1896. The two groups merged into one in 1919, known as it is today, the Westtown Alumni Association.

Two unidentified men inspect the work on the roof above Boys’ End of the new main building under construction. After more than 80 years of heavy use, expansion and repair of the original schoolhouse, Westtown’s governing committee determined that a new building with modern conveniences like electricity and steam heat, would cost less than updating the old. Quaker architect, Addison Hutton, designer of buildings at Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr Colleges and Lehigh University, was appointed to draw the final plans.

On the 23rd of June, 1899, the 34 members of the Class of 1899—the largest class yet to graduate from the school—celebrated commencement in a ceremony similar to our graduations today, by hearing selected classmates reading original essays and by receiving their diplomas from the head of school. Westtown had awarded its first diploma in 1862.

The girls’ field hockey team played its first home game (ever!) against another school on December 8, 1906. They hosted Moorestown Friends on a field just outside girls’ end of the main building, and beat them 5-1.

After classes on a cool and cloudy Friday, October the 25th , 1912, close to 100 Westtown alumni, committee members, teachers and students gathered on the water in canoes and on the wharf of the new Lake House to celebrate the official opening of the new Westtown Lake. The three men most responsible for the lake’s creation (visible near the right side of the photo, facing the crowd) made speeches about it, and then Westtown alumnus Joshua L. Baily, donor of the Lake House, welcomed all of them to make good use of this new place for outdoor fun.