St. ALBANSSCHOOL
http://www.stalbansschool.org/
A Brief History of St. Albans School
St. Albans School opened in the fall of 1909. A bequest of Harriet Lane Johnston (1830-1903), the niece and first lady of President James Buchanan, provided for the establishment of the all-boys School and for a scholarship fund for boys singing in the choir of the then-unbuilt Washington National Cathedral.
In 1907, the School’s classroom and dormitory building, the Lane-Johnston Building, was completed; the same year, the Cathedral’s foundation stone was laid. in the spring of 1909, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation selected as headmaster Earl Lamont Gregg, a thirty-year-old teacher and head of the Racine College Grammar School in Racine, Wisconsin.
Thirty-four students arrived at the National Cathedral School for Boys—as St. Albans was then called—in October 1909. Four years later, St. Albans became the first private boys school to be accredited by the D.C. Board of Education.
Many school activities popular today trace back to these early years, when students published the Albanian (then a weekly journal) and a school newspaper. Athletics—coached almost exclusively by faculty—emphasized the general well-being of students; the small size of the School led every boy to play a sport every season. The dormitory had forty beds. The student council included members of each Upper School form; senior prefects supervised student behavior and acted, in the words of one of the first prefects, “as student leaders in the broadest sense of the word.” Students and teachers gathered each day for a family-style lunch in the refectory. Prize Day and Blue-White Field Day also date to this era.
By 1915, St. Albans was a small but promising School, struggling for recognition in Washington, where many families preferred to send their sons to New England boarding schools. The School’s second headmaster, William Howell Church, attempted to alter this by dramatically raising academic standards. Under his careful eye, St. Albans began to grow.
The growth of the School soon necessitated new construction. In December 1928, work began on a four-story bluestone building attached to the Lane-Johnston Building by a cloister. Opened in the fall of 1929, the building would later be named for Alfred True, the Lower School head who, from 1932 to 1965, stood outside its main door every morning and greeted each student with a handshake.
Along with the new building came a new headmaster, the Rev. Albert Hawley Lucas (familiarly known as “Chief ”), who served in the Marines during World War I before becoming vice principal of Philadelphia’s Episcopal Academy. Lucas would shepherd the School through the Depression and World War II. In Lucas’s first year (1929-30), the School had 160 students; fifteen boys graduated. When Lucas retired in 1949, the student body had more than doubled to 375. The faculty, too, doubled in size under Lucas, who aspired to hire teachers with exceptional drive, intelligence, and, often, strong personalities: John C. Davis, Ferdinand Ruge, Doc Arnds, Al Wagner, and Dean Stambaugh all began teaching at St. Albans under Lucas.
Lucas left St. Albans in 1949 but only after hand-selecting his successor, Canon Charles Martin, who had served as a master at Episcopal Academy under Lucas before becoming the chaplain of the academy and then rector of Vermont’s largest Episcopal parish, St. Paul’s Church in Burlington.
The 1950s proved to be fertile years at St. Albans. Although Martin insisted the School was preparing boys “for the kingdom of heaven, not the kingdom of Harvard,” a high percentage of students headed to the Ivy League. (In 1957, Harvard accepted more than a third of the seniors.) Athletic teams excelled, winning numerous IAC titles. The Saint Albans News led several young editors to careers in journalism; prominent government officials addressed the Government Club; local papers gave rave reviews to the Glee Club’s original musicals.
Throughout this period, the School’s Board of Governors, established in 1946, became increasingly involved in school life, offering business and legal advice to the growing School, which, in the 1950s, added a five-story academic building named for Albert Lucas, and, in the 1960s, constructed the Lawrence Pool, the Ellison Library, the Trapier Theater, physics and biology labs, art studios, classrooms, faculty offices, and an expanded Cafritz Refectory.
In 1968, the School started the Risk Program (now the Skip Grant Program) to attract to the School a broad range of young men, including students of color and students from underrepresented backgrounds. In 1971, the School formally began a coordinate program with the National Cathedral School for Girls. In the decades since, this program has given both schools a greater variety of courses and has allowed boys and girls to learn from each other while benefiting from single-sex education.
The School’s longest-serving headmaster, Martin remained steadfast that St. Albans was and should always be a church school.
In one of his frequent letters to the St. Albans community, Martin explained what this meant: “Sacred Studies and chapel services do not make up a Church school, although they are indispensable parts of it. A Church school is a fellowship in which human beings can grow and develop into the fullness of manhood that God purposed for them. It is a family in which the basic needs of individuals are met, in which a boy has the security to grow.”
Before retiring in 1977, Martin conducted one last campaign to raise funds for the Martin Gymnasium and Steuart Building, which would open under Mark Mullin, the School’s fifth headmaster.
An Episcopal priest who had served as chaplain, teacher, and dean at Choate and as assistant headmaster of the Blue Ridge School, Mullin aimed to sustain the excellent quality of education at St. Albans, then widely recognized as a leading college preparatory school. He also strived to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. To accomplish this, the School began offering Russian and Japanese classes. Student exchange programs and travel fellowships gave students opportunities to study abroad. A writer-in-residence program allowed boys to work alongside practicing authors.
Although volunteer work had long been part of St. Albans students’ lives, in 1981 the School began requiring students to perform several hours (today sixty) of social service. Much like current students, boys worked locally, helping out at homeless shelters and day cares, and further a field, volunteering at American Indian reservations in the Southwest, refurbishing homes in Appalachia, and offering relief to hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast.
Oliver "Skip" Grant inspired students, teachers and parents throughout his many years at St. Albans. In the 1990s, St. Albans embarked on a $15 million capital campaign to renovate the Lower School. The True-Lucas Building, as the joined buildings came to be known, housed an expanded science center and Lower School library, a music room, and refurbished classrooms. Mark Mullin left the School in the spring of 1997, and retired history teacher John F. McCune was invited back to serve for two years as the School’s headmaster, while a wide search was made for the head who would lead the School into the twenty-first century.
In July 1999, Vance Wilson arrived at St. Albans School. A Yale graduate with twenty-five years’ experience teaching, Wilson had served most recently as the associate head of the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore.
Under Wilson, St. Albans embarked on the most ambitious fundraising effort in the School’s history: the Centennial Campaign, an effort to raise $80 million to increase financial aid and provide support for the School’s 575 students and 100 teachers, for the construction of Marriott Hall, to upgrade existing facilities, and to supplement the endowment so that the future of the School is secure. The campaign aims to maintain the high quality of education at St. Albans by encouraging faculty members to keep current on scholarship in their fields and on successful, new teaching methods; by helping students improve their study and test-taking skills; and by permitting department chairs to observe and advise junior colleagues.
As St. Albans begins its second century, the School remains committed to fostering the spiritual, intellectual, and physical development of each student. The School challenges boys to achieve excellence and to embrace responsibility, and it expects them to act with honor and to respect and care for others. As Headmaster Wilson writes, “For one hundred years, St. Albans has encouraged boys to strive for excellence in academics, athletics, and the arts in a church school setting, with great emphasis on moral and spiritual education. The arrangement works: The teachers at St. Albans are remarkably committed and caring; the students are talented, energetic, and thoughtful. They leave here well prepared for college and for life.”