William Van Duzer Lawrence - Contributions

Contributions

William Van Duzer Lawrence left behind several significant institutions including Sarah Lawrence College and Lawrence Hospital. One of his legacies was directly connected to Lawrence Park: Houlihan Lawrence, one of the nation's largest real estate firms, is a direct descendant of Lawrence Park Realty Company.

• Sarah Lawrence College - Founded in 1926 on the grounds of his estate, the college is named in honor of his wife, Sarah. From its inception, the college was intended to provide instruction in the arts and humanities for women. Its pedagogy, modeled on the tutorial system of Oxford University, combined independent research projects, individually supervised by the teaching faculty, and seminars with low student-to-faculty ratio – a credo it retains, despite its cost, to the present. Followed by Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence was the first liberal arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs.

• Lawrence Hospital - This institution was created when Lawrence’s son, Dudley, nearly died en route to a hospital in neighboring New York City.

Lawrence embodied ideas from the Progressivist movement of the 1890s, especially his view that the arts were a crucial element in the social evolution of individuals and families, in developing both private and public sensibilities, and in creating equal relations between men and women.