Not by a tax levy but by the Public School Society, a band of public-spirited men headed by Quakers, was founded in 1806 the first free non-sectarian school on Manhattan Island. When New York City set up a municipal school system, the Society generously handed over to the new Board of Education 20 humming little academies as a nucleus. To the city, however, the Quakers did not turn over their own famed private school, Friends Institute on Pearl Street. Last week Friends, now located in Stuyvesant Square, quietly celebrated its 150th anniversary.
On its sesquicentennial Friends Seminary, still small, had little...
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