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.
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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 robotics.
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
Josh Bekenstein, businessperson
Joan Birman, mathematician
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
Judith Krantz (BW '44), novelist
Wendy Mogel, psychologist and author
Murray Rothbard (BW '42), Founder of anarcho-capitalism
Edwin Schlossberg, designer
Mary Stolz (BW '36), novelist
Gardiner L. Tucker (BW '43), former director of IBM Research, Assistant Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary General of NATO
Barbara Walters, journalist, writer, and media personality