At age 200, Andover reaches out "to youth from every quarter"
In 1778 Samuel Phillips, a 26-year-old gunpowder manufacturer concerned about the "decay of virtue, public and private," began a school with a noble idea: to teach ''the great end and real business of living." The school itself was more humble: 13 students, ages six to 30, enrolled under the tutelage of Calvinist Eliphalet ("Elephant") Pearson in a converted carpenter's shop in Andover, Mass. "On Monday the scholars recite what they can remember of the sermons heard on the Lord's day previous," wrote Pearson in 1780. "On Saturday the bills are paid and the punishments administered."
This week Phillips Academy, better known as Andover, will celebrate its 200th birthday with well-deserved pomp. Andover is in the top rank of American preparatory schools—and in the forefront of their effort to become more than sheltered preserves for rich men's sons. TIME'S Evan Thomas, a 1969 alumnus, revisited Andover and reported:
Set amidst 450 acres of sweeping lawns and arching elms, Andover brims with history. Paul Revere engraved its seal; John Hancock signed its charter; George Washington addressed the school in 1789 (on horseback). English classes meet in a cupolaed schoolhouse designed by Charles Bulfinch in 1819; red brick Georgian-style buildings, many built through the beneficence of a Morgan partner in the 1920s, grace the campus.
In addition to legions of capitalists, the school has produced public servants like Henry Stimson and George Bush. Yale, the Los Angeles Times and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are all headed by Andover graduates. Other alumni include the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Tarzan Creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Actor Jack Lemmon. Humphrey Bogart never got his diploma; he was kicked out in 1918 for "incontrollably high spirits."
The nation's oldest incorporated independent school, Andover goes from ninth through twelfth grade. Its 683 boys and 405 girls come from 45 states and 14 foreign countries. About 6% of the students are black or Hispanic; there are also students like the coal miner's daughter who was unable to sleep in her dormitory bed because she was used to sleeping on the floor (the school lent her a sleeping bag).