Westtown School history

The first Westtown diploma was awarded in 1862.

1869 INDUSTRIAL HALL A new building was completed in 1869 to add classroom space for boys.

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.

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.

As a symbolic commitment to the Quaker roots of the school, the Class of 1902 presented an English ivy plant taken from the Fenny Drayton church where George Fox, early leader of the Quakers, was baptized.

The girls’ field hockey team played its first home game (ever!) against another school on December 8, 1906.

1912 LAKE 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.

1913 WESTTOWN FARM Though the land here was first farmed in 1708 and continued in cultivation under the school’s governance beginning in 1795—its dairy was first “modernized” in 1913.

1914 STUDENT NEWSPAPER The first issue of the Westtown school newspaper The Brown & White was published on October 2nd, 1914.

Visual and performing arts classes added a new dimension to the curriculum in the 1920s.

New buildings began to dot the campus, including the Meeting House in 1929, and structures devoted to physical education, science and the arts.

Non-Quakers were admitted for the first time in 1933, and the student body became more culturally, racially and economically diverse in years following.

The Lane School, an elementary day school for faculty and campus children that had started in a nearby faculty home, first met in its own building in 1936.

1942 WORK PROGRAM With the coming of the Second World War and the loss of many paid staff at the school, teachers and students worked together to organize teams on three week shifts to do the daily jobs needing to be done around the school.

Westtown’s first Mock Convention was held in 1948 and reappeared every 4 years for several decades.

1952 MOCK CONVENTIONS On April 24th, 1952, the Westtown faculty and students held their mock convention for the GOP—the party out of power—on a day of speeches, debates, banners and flag waving, state caucuses, platform fights and vote counts.

After a few expansions, it was renamed the Westtown Lower School in 1958.

Middle School, then consisting of grades 7 and 8, was given its own space in Industrial Hall in 1960.

Service Network was established in 1978 to engage students in the community beyond Westtown.

Those facilities were expanded in 1983 when grade 6 was moved from Lower to Middle School.