Abington Friends School - Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
By: Jennifer Walker - Journey
Three hundred years ago, in the remote wilderness of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, members of the Quaker-based Oxford Monthly Meeting expressed an interest in developing a religious education facility for its youth. A wealthy member, John Barnes, helped see that the dream became a reality when, in 1697, he donated 120 acres of pristine land for the school. It was on this ground later that year that the Abington Friends Meeting and School was built.
Since that time, Abington Friends School has been continuously operated on the same plot of land, making it one of the oldest schools in the nation.
It’s a proud tradition at Abington Friends School, one that the community also surely sees, as the school has grown both in the grades it accommodates to the programs it offers. But as the school flourished, it began to outgrow its structures.
In 2000, Abington Friends School hired Spillman Farmer Architects to develop a master plan for its future. Based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Spillman Farmer, with a team of principal, project architects, drafts people, and interior designers, works with each client from conceptual design through construction completion.
“First, we met with all the end users – the students, faculty, board members,” said Russel Pacala, an associate at Spillman Farmer who served as project architect, referring to the development of the master plan.
With a philosophy of “building through community,” Abington Friends School wanted to expand on this process.
Meetings were scheduled and community participation was encouraged from everyone who wanted to attend, which, as a result, brought representation from special interest groups and the school board. There, the needs were discussed – expanding classrooms and athletic space, creating social interaction and quiet reflection areas, building a new library and media center. In total, planners met with nearly 100 people from the community. The result was a phased plan that would deliver the specific, pressing needs of the historic school.
Soon after those initial meetings, members of the Abington Monthly Meeting, which oversees the school, fine-tuned its vision and began moving forward on a plan with an emphasis to embrace the mission of the school – the Quaker principle that there is “that of God” in every person. Thus, the school fosters in its students a compassion for others, a sense of social responsibility, a passion for learning, and an appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the world around them. The school’s design, as a result, should lend itself to that mission, according to school leaders.
Secondly, Abington Friends School wanted to provide its students with the most up-to-date technology available.
“We decided we needed to get into the 21st century,” said Polly Luskus, administrative assistant to the head of Abington Friends School.
Tearing down the old library (and temporarily moving it to two other classrooms) and building a new and expertly equipped library/media center was a large step toward reaching that goal.
One of the pressing issues for Pacala from a design standpoint was giving the school some identity.
“There was just no focal point,” he said. “The existing buildings were low-slung and unremarkable. They just blended into the scenery.”
Nothing identified the school – like a bell tower or steeple that could later be used on stationery or as a landmark.
Pacala’s idea was design the library and media center, which, in part, would share a portion of its space with a renovated lobby, to be a distinctive feature that represented the spirit of the school. The library, at more than 18,000 square feet, was designed with a high-pitched roof that marked a high point on the campus and offered a comfortable openness inside the room.
The plan also included renovating and adding about 4,000 square feet of new classrooms, offices and bathrooms, as well as building a generously wide, curving 11,000-plus square-foot corridor, called the Student Street, that connected the renovated lobby with the existing science wing. The Student Street, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking closed-in courtyards and offering generous amounts of natural sunlight, would serve as a gathering place for students of all ages as well as a place to settle quietly and relax.
From the outside, the new structure had to appear welcome among its centuries-old neighbors, such as the stone Meeting House.
“We tried to match the stone, but not verbatim,” Pascala said. “It looks nice.”
Abington Friends School’s three centuries of educating youth always has been in context to what it calls “continuing revelation” – being open to new leadings or directions. And in designing and building its new additions, that philosophy was key, said Pascala.
“They were very forward thinking,” he said. “Of course, they had their own ideas. But they were very open to different ideas. It made them very easy to work with.”
Today, the school flourishes with an enrollment of 650 students ranging from pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade. And its campus is a story of character with architecture that blends centuries-old buildings with brand-new construction on the same 120-acre plot where it was founded.
Spillman Farmer Architects is based in Bethlehem, Penn., and offers a menu of services from planning to ribbon-cutting and beyond, www.spillmanfarmer.com.
Fast Facts
School: Abington Friends School
Location: Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
Student Body: 650
Grades Serves: Pre-Kindergarten – 12th grade
Project Goal: Renovate existing classrooms and lobby, build new library.
Size: Library – 18,595 square feet; Student Street – 11,840 square feet; Renovations to existing classrooms and lobby – 4,075 square feet
Cost: $6.5 million
Challenge: Low-slung eaves on existing buildings hid the school’s true charm.
Solution: Making the new library the school’s new focal point added grand character yet still complemented the school’s historic buildings.
