Birch Wathen Lenox School

The Birch Wathen Lenox School is a college preparatory K-12 school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Birch Wathen Lenox comprises approximately 500 students from all around New York City. The Birch Wathen Lenox School is one of 322 independent schools located in the city.

Birch Wathen Lenox School
Location
210 East 77th Street Manhattan, New York City , New York 10075 United States
Coordinates	40°46′21″N 73°57′27.5″W
Information
Former names	Birch Wathen School (1921) Lenox School (1916)
Type	Private, Coeducational
Motto	Integrity, Civility, Loyalty
Established	1991 (as Birch Wathen Lenox School)
Head of school	Bill E. Kuhn
Faculty	70[1]
Grades	K-12
Enrollment	500 (total)[2] 175 (grades 9–12)[1]
Campus size	Single Building
Campus type	Brownstone
Color(s)	Blue and White
Athletics	All major high school varsity sports
Mascot	Lion
Publication	Leaves
Newspaper	The Clarion
Website	bwl.org

History

Birch Wathen Lenox was created in 1991 through the merger of the Birch Wathen School (founded in 1921 by Louise Birch and Edith Wathen), and The Lenox School (founded in 1916 by Jessica Garretson Finch).

The Lenox School had been an all-girls school until 1974, when it went co-educational.

Between 1962 and 1989, Birch Wathen was located in the Herbert N. Straus House, an ornate French-style building at 9 East 71st Street across from the Frick Collection

Sports

Birch Wathen Lenox fields teams in soccer, volleyball, swimming, basketball, baseball, cross country, track and field, golf, tennis, hockey and roblotics.

Athletic teams play under the auspices of the Independent Schools Athletic League (New York) or the Girls Independent School Athletic League, which are leagues in the NYSAISAA (New York State Association of Independent Schools Athletic Association).

The robotics team plays in the FIRST Robotics Competition, more commonly referred to as FRC.

Notable alumni

• Kathy Acker, writer^[3]
• Hope Cooke, last Queen of Sikkim
• Barbara Costikyan, food writer
• Joel Crothers (BW '58), actor
• Viola Essen, dancer
• Robert Gottlieb, president of Knopf Publishing.
• John Katzman, edupreneur, CEO of Noodle
• Alfred A Knopf, Jr., publisher^[4]
• Judith Krantz (BW '44), novelist^[5]
• Wendy Mogel, psychologist and author^[6]
• Murray Rothbard (BW '42), Founder of anarcho-capitalism
• Edwin Schlossberg, designer ^[7]
• Mary Stolz (BW '36), novelist^[8]
• Gardiner L. Tucker (BW '43), former director of IBM Research, Assistant Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary General of NATO^[9]
• Barbara Walters, journalist, writer, and media personality^[10][11]