Baldwin School

The Baldwin School
Disce Verum Laborem
Location
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania United States
Information
Type	Private, All-Girl
Religious affiliation(s)	Nonsectarian
Established	1888
Head of School	Sally M. Powell
Faculty	73 full-time, 11 part-time
Enrollment	587 girls
Average class size	13 girls
Student to teacher ratio	7 to 1
Campus	Suburban
Color(s)	Blue and Gray
Athletics	Baldwin Bears
Athletics conference	Inter-Academic League
Mascot	Winnie the Bear
Average SAT scores	2210
Website	www.baldwinschool.org
Bryn Mawr Hotel
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Pennsylvania state historical marker
Location	Morris and Montgomery Aves., Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Coordinates
Area	1.5 acres (0.61 ha)
Built	1890
Architect	Furness, Evans, & Co.; Furness, Frank
Architectural style	Renaissance, French Chateau, Other
NRHP Reference #	79002300
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	April 27, 1979
Designated PHMC	April 11, 2000

The Baldwin School is an American all-girls independent school located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in Greater Philadelphia. Founded in 1888 by Florence Baldwin, it now consists of a Lower, Middle and Upper School totaling approximately 570 in enrollment.

The school occupies a 19th-century resort hotel designed by Victorian architect Frank Furness, a landmark of the Philadelphia Main Line. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 27, 1979.

History

In 1888, Miss Florence Baldwin founded "Miss Baldwin's School for Girls, Preparatory for Bryn Mawr College" in her mother's house at the corner of Montgomery and Morris Avenues in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. The first class was composed of thirteen girls.

"The Residence" (formerly Bryn Mawr Hotel) by Furness, Evans & Company. The second Bryn Mawr Hotel opened May 30, 1891).

The second Bryn Mawr Hotel was designed by Furness, Evans & Company and built in 1890-91. It is a five-story, "L" shaped stone-and-brick building in a Renaissance Revival / Châteauesque style. It features a large semi-circular section at the main entrance, topped by a conical roof and finial. It has a steeply pitched red roof with a variety of dormers, chimneys, towers, finials, and skylights.

In 1896, The Baldwin School began leasing the Bryn Mawr Hotel during the winter months, then year-round in 1912. In 1922, the school purchased the building and the surrounding 25 acres (100,000 m²) for $240,000.

Today the school has added many additions but still manages to maintain the elegance and grandeur of the original building. The original building is known as "The Residence," and formerly served as dormitories for boarding students. It is now home to the dining hall, art studio, apartments for faculty and staff, music classes, and an Early Childhood Center, with renovations completed in 2014 specifically for the Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten classes. A two-story science building opened in 1961 and was enlarged in 1995 to accommodate the increasing number of students. The Upper and Middle Schools inhabit the three-story Schoolhouse, which was built in 1926 and renovated in 1997. Grades 1-5 are housed in the Lower School building which was completed in 1974.

The school formally opened a new athletic center in 2008. The new building has a six-lane swimming pool, gymnasium, three-lane jogging track, 4 squash courts, fitness center and multipurpose meeting/activity space. It is accompanied by a five tennis courts and a practice field.

Scholarships

$2.8 million in scholarships is distributed annually to 28% of the students. The average grant awarded was $18,261.

Student body

Students of color represent 40% of the student body. The Baldwin School is not religiously associated.

Academics

Twenty six percent of the Class of 2014 went on to attend Ivy league institutions. Twenty seven percent of the Class of 2015 was recognized by the National Merit® Scholarship Program.

Baldwin has a high percentage of graduates majoring and working in math and science fields, about 1/3 greater than the national average for women. In 2014, 28% of the graduates pursued a degree in science and engineering.

Arts

Music

Baldwin's music education begins in the Lower School. Students receive twice weekly music classes and sing in weekly choruses in Grades 3-5. Students perform in musical plays once a year. In Middle School, chorus, orchestra and classes in guitar and hand bell care available. In Upper School, ensembles include a jazz band, classical chamber music ensemble Firenze, two hand bell choirs, chorus, select a cappella vocal ensemble Baldwin B-Flats, select singing ensemble Eliza-B-thans and an orchestra. Each ensemble is featured during multiple evening concerts throughout the year.

The Middle School Chorus participates annually in the Music in the Parks competition at Hershey Park in May. At the 2014 competition, the Middle School Chorus received a Superior rating and the Best Overall Middle School Chorus trophy for their performances. Every three years, the Upper School ensembles take a week and a half performance tour to a destination abroad. Past destinations include Vienna, Austria, Tuscany, Italy, Budapest, Hungary, Stockholm, Sweden, Oslo, Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Baldwin Conservatory offers weekly private instruction on piano, voice, violin, viola, flute, clarinet, saxophone, oboe, trumpet, trombone, guitar, ukulele, banjo and harp. The Baldwin Conservatory has had many accomplished musicians as faculty including pianist and composer Jean Paul Kürsteiner.

Theater

The 2013 drama production “Laughter and Cake” received CAPPIE nominations for best play, creativity (playwriting), featured actor, comic actress in a play and supporting actress in a play. The Upper School Maskers Club supports the theater through ushering and advertising.

The 2014 drama production "Chamber Music" (directed by Cynthia Angst) received seven CAPPIE nominations for Best Play, Best Ensemble, Best Supporting Actress, Best Actress in a Comedic Role, Best Actress, Best Costumes, and Best Featured Actress. Of those nominations, they won Best Supporting Actress (Jane Bradley '17) and Best Actress in a Comedic Role (Alexa Kent '16).

In the 2013-14 school year:

• a student won a gold medal at Alliance for Young Artists & Writers's Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for her dramatic script.
• a student placed 1st in the Monologue Competition at the Zak-Pac Convention for Performing Arts.
• Middle and Upper School drama students submitted plays to the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival and one student received a stage reading of her play as part of Pizza and Playwrights.
• one student placed 2nd and another placed 3rd in the Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ Annual Play writing Festival.
• an excerpt from a student's original work was featured in an Off-Broadway Dramatic Reading Series at the ART.WRITE.NOW 2014 National Exhibition in June.
• a student was one of 30 American and international actors ages 12 to 19 who traveled to the Czech Republic to perform "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" within the walls of Terezin Concentration Camp.

Visual Art

Baldwin offers lessons in ceramics, computer graphics, photography, jewelry making, painting and sculpture. The School's Rembrandt antique-style etching press was restored during the 2013-14 school year and used extensively for Middle School and Upper School Art Exhibition student works. 2013-14 Upper School students had their work displayed in the Tyler School of Art's "Clay Programs of Excellence" and the After-School Enrichment Ceramics classes displayed their work at Bryn Mawr's Ludington Memorial Library.

Athletics

The Baldwin School competes in the Inter-Academic League, most commonly known as the Inter-Ac. Interscholastic varsity sports are: Basketball, Cross-Country, Field Hockey, Golf, Lacrosse, Rowing, Soccer, Softball, Squash, Swimming and Diving, Tennis, Volleyball, and Indoor Track. Dance is also offered, and students also have the option of Independent PE if they are seriously committed to a sport outside of school such as fencing or ice skating.

Six members of the Class of 2014 continued their respective athletic careers at the collegiate level including varsity swimming at Connecticut College and Columbia University, varsity squash at Yale University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Drexel University and varsity tennis at the US Naval Academy.

The Baldwin School's recently built athletic center features an indoor track, swimming pool, fitness center, dance studio, squash courts, and basketball court. The building features solar reflective roofing, regionally sourced materials, Energy Star equipment and appliances, and an indoor air quality management system.

Notable alumnae

• Gertrude Summer Ely (1895) - twice-decorated by the French for Distinguished Bravery Under Fire, past president of the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters, member of the executive committee for UNICEF and the World Affairs Councils of America
• Helen Taft Manning (1908) – daughter of President William Howard Taft, Dean of Bryn Mawr College, Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, suffragette
• Emily Hartshorne Mudd (1917) - Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, first woman to become a full professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
• Cornelia Otis Skinner (1918) – author of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, film and Broadway actress
• Bertha Adkins (1924) – Undersecretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Chairman of the Federal Council on Aging, Organizer of the White House Council on Children and Youth, Maryland Women's Hall of Fame Inductee, Executive Director of the Women's Division of the *Republican National Committee
• Anne Cabot Wyman (1948) -journalist, first female editorial page editor of The Boston Globe, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing finalist
• Martha Nussbaum (1964) – author, first woman Junior Fellow at Harvard University, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, Founding and Past President of the Human Development and Capability Association, Past President of American Philosophical Association, Central Division
• Susan Bunting Larson (1965) - Vice President of Dell
• Henrietta H. Fore (1966) – first woman Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, 37th Director of the United States Mint in the U.S. Department of Treasury, Presidential Appointee for President George H. W. Bush at the U.S. Agency for International Development
• Louise Dolan (1967) - Mathematical Physicist and Professor of Physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Fulbright Scholar, Harvard University Junior Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society
• Trish Hall (1968) – New York Times Op-Ed and Sunday Review editor
• Joelle Attinger (1969) - first female top editor (executive editor) and correspondent for Time magazine, President of the European Institute
• Margaret Robinson (1969) - Professor of Molecular Cell Biology at Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at University of Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Society
• Andrea Lee (1970) - writer and novelist
• Marjorie Yang (1970) - non-official member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong, chairperson of the Esquel Group, independent non-executive director of HSBC, Swire Pacific and Novartis AG, Fortune Magazine's Top 50 Most Powerful Women in International Business
• Kate Miller (1978) - Dean of Texas A&M College of Geosciences, Geological Society of America Fellow
• Jody Gerson (1979) – Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, co-president of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, responsible for signing Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones, producer of Drumline and ATL, executive producer of Drumline: A New Beat
• Farah J. Griffin (1981) – author, Professor at Columbia University, New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellow
• Ruth Davidon (1982) – rower, 1996 Summer Olympics and 2000 Summer Olympics
• Kinney Zalesne (1983) – Principal strategist at Microsoft, Counsel to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, White House Fellow, Assistant District Attorney for the City of Philadelphia
• Leslie Lyness (1986) - US women's field hockey midfielder, 1996 Summer Olympics
• Marisa Porges (1996) - White House Fellow, policy adviser in the United States Department of Defense and United States Department of the Treasury, post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
• Emma Hamm (2007) - Duke University Division I lacrosse midfielder, 2007 U-19 World Championship Team member, Atlantic Coast Conference Rookie of the Year, WomensLacrosse.com Rookie of the Year, Womenslax.com Rookie of the Year
• Asali Solomon - Author and academic
• Alice Goffman sociologist

External links

• Official site
• Main Line Today magazine
• Petersen's Private Secondary Schools
• National Coalition of Girls' Schools
• National Association of Independent Schools
• History of the Main Line