History
Friends Seminary, established by members of the Religious Society of Friends, whose members are known as Quakers, was founded in 1786 as Friends' Institute through a $10,000 bequest of Robert Murray, a wealthy New York merchant. It was located on Pearl Street in Manhattan and strived to provide Quaker children with a "guarded education." In 1826, the school was moved to a larger campus on Elizabeth Street. Tuition in that year was $10 or less per annum, except for the oldest students, whose families paid $20. (By 1915, tuition had risen to $250.) The school again moved in 1860 to its current location and changed its name to Friends Seminary.
In 1878, Friends Seminary was one of the earliest of schools to establish a Kindergarten. In 1925, it was the first private co-educational school to hire a full-time psychologist. M. Scott Peck, who transferred to Friends from Phillips Exeter in late 1952, praised the school's diversity and nurturing atmosphere. "While at Friends," he wrote, "I awoke each morning eager for the day ahead ... t Exeter, I could barely crawl out of bed"
In recent years the school has made an effort to increase its endowment and has engaged in an ambitious and controversial renovation of its buildings. In 2011, based on recommendations made in 2005 by the Trustees of the New York Quarterly Meeting after completion of a study, consideration of incorporating the school and the New York Quarterly Meeting separately was under consideration but consensus had not been reached by the meeting. After separation it was contemplated that the school program would continue to incorporate Quaker values and that its board of directors be controlled by Quakers.
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