BFS Makes Groundbreaking History in Downtown Brooklyn

Breaking ground for the new BFS Upper School:
Trustees Brad Mulder '83 and Lara Holliday,
and US Head Bob Bowman

What a great moment in the history of our school! We often think of history as something that happened long ago, but we actually make history every day of our lives. Some moments are particularly impactful, like the one that happened just yesterday for Brooklyn Friends School as we broke ground on the future home of our Upper School at One MetroTech Center, almost one year after BFS signed our 49-year lease with Forest-City Ratner Companies. 

We so appreciate the many friends of BFS who share in this joyous moment, whether present or not among the crowd at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony. In case you missed it, there was a great article heralding our future Upper School home in Tuesday's New York Daily News - off about our school's age by almost 150 years, but no matter. This exciting and long-time dream for BFS will be realized at last, and it will happen best with your involvement.

Providing for the future growth of Brooklyn Friends School is critical to its success. Our school's long history and its expansion, growth and capital improvements occurred only because BFS community members recognized that the future of BFS is more important than its present at any given moment, and that future would only be possible with their stewardship of BFS and their charitable contributions to our annual giving campaign, our endowment and our capital campaigns. Please make your gift to the Brooklyn Friends Fund today and know that your school also needs your support and the support of every BFS community member for its endowment and its coming capital campaign for the new Upper School at One MetroTech.

BFS has certainly had other groundbreakings through the years, but whether we actually held groundbreaking ceremonies is unclear in records, even with insight from both the Property and Schools Committee Minutes of New York Monthly Meeting. Below is a brief timeline listing a few possible groundbreaking ceremonies from Brooklyn Friends School history:

One MetroTech Center,
future home of the BFS Upper School

1867: BFS opens at the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn.

1886: BFS's one-story addition to the Brooklyn Meeting House.

1902: BFS's "little red schoolhouse" at 112 Schermerhorn, "broke ground" on May 19, 1902.

1937: BFS's Friends School Field House.

1972: BFS began renovations of Pearl Street, February 29, 1972.

2006: BFS held a groundbreaking ceremony in the summer for the Charles A. Leeds, Jr. Rooftop Playground at Pearl Street, just one of the many capital improvements made possible by our 2005-2007 capital campaign.

Sledgehammers at the ready for yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony:
Eve Bromberg '15, Airenakhue Omoagbon '15, Head of School Larry Weiss, 
Jonathan Bach '15,Trustee Brad Mulder '83, Trustee Lara Holliday, Upper School Head Bob Bowman

BFS alumni at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony:Anand Vora '01, Richard Reiben '71, Director of Alumni Lekeia Varlack '99, Barbara Ingersoll Rothenberg '63, Derek Lynch, '89, Alap Vora '03, Karim Camara '88.

Our First Meeting for Worship, 1941

Meeting for Worship is such an important element of the Brooklyn Friends School experience that it is difficult to imagine that it did not exist in its present form at Brooklyn Friends School until October 30, 1941. We can thank Douglas G. Grafflin and S. Archibald Smith, two former BFS Heads of School, for introducing the Meeting for Worship we know today to both Brooklyn Friends School and

Finding BFS: Further Evidence

Some may remember that we published an article about the 1931 Football Team in 2006, honoring the 75th anniversary of their incredible feat, A Perfect Season - The Football Team of 1931. Ironically, while scanning new photos for the BFS Sampler album on the Photos page of the Digital Archives, I discovered that there had once been a plaque at BFS honoring the acclaimed football team of that 1931-1932 school year. The photos below illustrate how short institutional memory can be. And it's not just BFS, believe me, such memory lapses happen everywhere.

The first photo is of a wood shop class, taken in the late 1930s. What is on the shelf on the rear wall?

Hitting 1000 Points

Last week, BFS senior Janna Joissainte became the first woman in known BFS memory to score 1,000 points in her basketball career at Brooklyn Friends School. Janna scored her 1,000th point on February 20, 2013, and she ended with 1,016 career points.