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Bronxville School to Celebrate Its Centennial on September 24, 2022

By Irena Choi Stern, Bronxville School Centennial Steering Committee

June 2, 2022: The Bronxville School will celebrate its centennial on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022 with a day-long program featuring alumni interviews, school tours, a retrospective photo display and athletic competition, as well as commemorative swag. Alumni expected to be interviewed include Lis Smith ’02, a political consultant, formerly the senior communications director for Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign and author of Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, to be published by HarperCollins on July 19.

“We look forward to celebrating this milestone anniversary with the community,” said Superintendent Dr. Roy Montesano. “I am grateful to all Bronxville families and school graduates for creating a fun and educational day of programming to mark the school’s centennial.”

Bronxville’s first school was built in 1870, when the village’s first generation of local benefactors donated a small plot of land along Pondfield Road in what is now the commercial district. But it was in 1922 that the school received its accreditation by New York State as a diploma-granting institution, kindergarten through grade 12, according to Portrait of a Lighthouse School: Public Education in Bronxville, New York by Claudia Keenan, published in 1997 on the occasion of the school’s 75th anniversary.

“Arguably, 1922 was the most significant year in the history of the Bronxville School,” Keenan said. “Guided by its first superintendent, Alexander J. Stoddard, the School began to draw modern young teachers who were attracted to the progressive curriculum and method. Bronxville soon developed a reputation for an individualized, interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. The students flourished along with the School.”

Also in 1922, Stoddard launched the planning and construction of two new buildings facing Pondfield Road between Midland and Meadow Avenues. They would be completed in 1924.

The morning will include school tours led by current students and feature alumni interviews in the school auditorium, conducted by Sissel McCarthy, Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Journalism Program at Hunter College. The afternoon will feature sports competitions on the athletic fields.

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