Buckingham Browne & Nichols School

Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, often referred to as BB&N, is an independent co-educational day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, educating students from pre-kindergarten (called Beginners) through twelfth grade. The School has produced three of the 27 Presidential Scholars from Massachusetts since the inception of the program in 1964 and is a member of the G30 Schools group and the Round Square global education association.[3]

Buckingham Browne & Nichols School
Address
80 Gerry's Landing Road

Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
02138

United States
Information
TypePrivate, Independent
MottoHonestas, Litterae, Comitas
(Honor, Scholarship, and Kindness)
Religious affiliation(s)None
Established1883 (1883) – Browne & Nichols
1889 – Buckingham School
CEEB code220475
DeanRory Morton
Head of schoolJennifer Price
GradesPre-K–12
Enrollment1,003[1]
Student to teacher ratio6:1[1]
Campuses3
Color(s)Blue & Gold
SongJerusalem
Athletics conferenceIndependent School League
MascotKnight
NicknameBB&N
AccreditationNEASC[2]
NewspaperThe Vanguard, The Mouthguard, The Point of View, CHASM, The Benchwarmer
YearbookThe Perspective
Budget$43,998,280[1]
Annual tuition$50,000 (grades 9-12)
Websitewww.bbns.org

Origins

Browne & Nichols School (B&N) was founded in 1883 by George Henry Browne, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate who, having embarked on a career as a teacher of Latin and English literature, attracted the attention of his former professors Francis J. Child and Charles Eliot Norton. Seeking an alternative to the Cambridge public schools, Child and Norton recruited Browne to teach their three sons and two other boys. At the end of that year, Browne enlisted his Harvard classmate Edgar H. Nichols to join him as the co-head of a new college preparatory school, which opened in the fall with an enrollment of 17, a number that quickly expanded.

The Buckingham School was named and incorporated in 1902, but the first schoolhouse was opened in 1892, known as Miss Markham's School after its founding headmistress. Because Jeanette Markham had been conducting classes for small children in a private school since at least 1889, that is the year from which Buckingham dates its beginning.

Markham came to Cambridge from Atchison, Kansas to pursue an education at the recently founded women's college later named Radcliffe. Upon arriving in Cambridge, she found a home with Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson on Buckingham Street, to whom she is said to have become "virtually an elder daughter" (59). After she began teaching in a neighbor's home, another neighbor, Mrs. Richard H. Dana, offered to build a schoolhouse and living quarters nearby, where the school began with 12 students. That schoolhouse continues to be part of BB&N's Lower School campus to this day.

School buildings and campuses
Upper School

During the year 1882–1883, before Browne & Nichols came into formal existence, founder George H. Browne taught his small group of students in two rooms in Harvard's Felton Hall. With the formation of the school in 1883, instruction took place at 11 Appian Way, with the addition of another building at 8 Garden Street. Radcliffe College, which now occupies this land, wished to expand here, and so it made an exchange with B&N, which relocated in 1897 to a new brick building at 20 Garden Street. That building was designed by Edgar Nichols's sister-in-law, Minerva Parker Nichols, and is said to be "the first important building by a woman architect."[4]

Athletics
BB&N's Nicholas Athletic Center from the side.
The entrance to the Nicholas Athletic Center.

Rowing

The name of the school's athletic teams, "the Knights", has its origins in a 1920s Boston Globe article which referred to the rowing team in particular, undefeated against the likes of Harvard, MIT and Kent School, as "the Black Knights of the Charles", itself a reference to the Army Black Knights. In addition to taking the team name, Browne & Nichols also took black and white as its colors after the article. The Buckingham School's colors, blue and gold, were made the combined school's colors after the merger. The school was the first American schoolboy crew to win the Henley Royal Regatta in Henley-on-Thames, England, winning the Thames Challenge Cup in 1929.[5][6] The Washington Post commented:

"The Thames Challenge Cup, prize of England's famous rowing tournament, was captured today by eight young oarsmen from the Browne and Nichols School...The American boys, after each victory, gave a fine display of school spirit and overflowing "pep" which added to their already great popularity on the river...Their success was the more impressive when it is considered that the average age of the oarsmen is younger than the average of their defeated rivals. The boys will be received by the American Ambassador at London Monday and then will begin an educational tour of England."[7]

Tennis

In 2004, the girls varsity tennis team became ISL Champions for the first time in school history. The boys varsity tennis team won the New England Class B Tournament in 2004, the 2005 ISL Championship, and finished second in the 2007 New England Class B Tournament.[8]

Other sports

BB&N also has both girls' and boys' hockey teams, although the boys team has had a losing record in the past 4 years and has had 3 different coaches throughout that time.[9]

Notable alumni

Browne & Nichols

Buckingham

BB&N

References
  1. "Quick Facts – Buckingham Browne & Nichols". www.bbns.org.
  2. (PDF). November 21, 2008 https://web.archive.org/web/20081121004805/http://bbns.org/link/documents/oct08.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 21, 2008. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. "Presidential Scholars". presidentialscholars.org. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 23 September 2010.
  4. Lois Lilley Howe, The History of Garden Street, Cambridge Historical Society, 1949, page 47 Archived 2016-10-27 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Columbia Beaten by English Crew ... Browne & Nichols Wins", The New York Times, July 6, 1929. p 9.
  6. "BOSTON PREPS CAPTURE CUP IN HENLEY REGATTA.", The Chicago Daily Tribune: Jul 7, 1929. ; p. A4
  7. THAMES BOAT FEATURE TO U.S. LADS; Brown-Nichols School Wins Challenge Cup in Upset.", The Washington Post. Jul 7, 1929. ; p. M16.
  8. "2004 New England Team Championships". preptennis.org.
  9. "Boys Hockey". The Vanguard. Retrieved 2020-01-17.
  10. "Mass.gov". Mass.gov.
  11. "THOMAS H. ELIOT: LEGISLATOR AND EDUCATOR". June 13, 2007. Archived from the original on June 13, 2007.
  12. "Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, B&N '60". Archived from the original on 2017-11-21. Retrieved 2017-11-21.
  13. "BB&N – Academics – The Upper School – Curriculum – Foreign Language". June 4, 2007. Archived from the original on June 4, 2007.
  14. "Player Perspective: Andrew Chin". ESPN. August 5, 2010.

42.3791°N 71.1296°W / 42.3791; -71.1296


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