JANUARY
FALL 1968
SPRI NG 1 9 6 9
Reaffirming Park’s Values
E N D S
This is an exciting time for Park. As we think and talk about the move, we renew our appreciation of the importance of this School. In a world where the quality of our children’s lives is threatened by crowding and by the technology of a Brave New World, the philosophy of Park has new relevance: that the individual and his development are the first value. At Park, small classes, an unfettered faculty, and an administration in immediate contact with parents and children work together for the growth of the individual child. To avoid the mediocrity of mass education, we must constantly seek new ways to encourage this growth and maintain the personal touch.
P L A N N I N G
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— Anne Worthington Prescott, Board Chair The Park Parent, December 1968
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A few dedicated souls loaned $1,565,000 to the School for the benefit of future Park generations.
Gifts, Pledges, and LOANS!
— Steve Swensrud, The Park School One Hundred Years, p. 137
ith the spiraling inflation of the late ’60s, building costs keep escalating by 18 to 24 percent a year. Although they had secured pledges of $1,050,000 when school opened in September 1968, it became discouragingly clear to the planners of the new school that they could never raise enough money fast enough to get the school built. Trustee and Corporation treasurer Stephen B. Swensrud saved the day. At his suggestion, Bayard Henry and Charlie Cunningham went back to half a dozen families who had already pledged major gifts and asked them to make interest-free loans — on a strictly business basis, with a six-year repayment term — to help build the School.
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Designed for Flexibility
Why 171?
The new Park School on Goddard Avenue will be librarycentered and designed for flexibility…. Within the library, there is to be a diversity of moods to accommodate all types of individual study. This carefully planned flexibility is the soul of the new school.
The Town of Brookline asks the School to select an odd street number on Goddard Avenue. Following a spirited contest among the faculty and staff, Headmaster Bob Hurlbut selects Ellie Judkins’ entry — — “both for ease of memory and typing and its reference to the year in which we would move.”
The Park Parent, January
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In the old school, lunch was a catch-as-catch-can affair. Part of the detailed planning for the new building included not only designing the dining room, but also considering what the tables would look like. I suggested that we choose round tables — they seemed to fit with Park’s non-hierarchical style —enabling the teacher and the kids to interact with each other.
— Jonathan Shaw
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The new school is to be in the shape of an inverted P, with the main entrance near the middle of the shaft, facing southwest to Goddard Avenue. — Mary Nickerson, writing in The Park Parent January 1969
171 GODDA RD AVENUE TURNS 40
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