American School of Paris - History

History

ASP was the first International School established in Europe and remains the only American School in France.

Founded in 1946 to school the children of those who arrived in Paris in the pioneering aftermath of the Second World War, ASP has remained true to its founding mission and continues today to provide a high quality education delivered in English to the children of diplomatic and corporate families. From 1959 and 1967, the ASP was located in Louveciennes, a suburb of Paris, between Saint Germain en Laye and Versailles. The Elementary School was in a series of trailer homes west of Rue de la Machine, nearby the Middle School in a French manor house, and the High School was in a famous French courtesan/king's mistress Madame Du Barry's house. History of the DuBarry Mansion (see Claude Nicolas Ledoux): When it was acquired in 1923 by the perfumer François Coty from the politician and industrial Louis Loucheur, the house was found to be subject to a grave disorder because of the sinking slope on which it was built. François Coty called upon the architect Charles Mewès (1860–1914) to displace it several meters. This radical solution saved the building from erosion of the slope, which would have entirely destroyed it within the next few years. The move was accompanied by profound transformations: the mansard roof was converted into an attic sheltering five bedrooms, while vast dependences were created in the basement to arrange a perfume laboratory, an electric generator, kitchens and a swimming pool.

In 1959, the house was bought by the American School of Paris, which then settled there. In cleaning the building some Nazi materials were found. The story was that while the Germans occupied the building in World War II, the French Resistance was active in the tunnels of the old stone quarries under the building. These quarries had provided some of the stone used to build Paris. The school wanted to expand by putting up new buildings but the underlying tunnels made the ground unstable. In 1967, the school moved to its current location in St. Cloud, a former American armed forces school campus. Many improvements have been made since.

In April 2006, a flash flood devastated a large portion of the St. Cloud school campus and ravaged several classrooms and facilities. In the wake of the flood, a new capital campaign was launched to completely renovate and upgrade these facilities, culminating with the reopening of a refurbished Lower School and a state-of-the-art Performing Arts Center.