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}} Berwick Academy is a college preparatory school located in South Berwick, Maine. Founded in 1791, it is the oldest educational institution in Maine and one of the oldest private schools in North America. The school sits on a 72 acre, 11-building campus on a hill overlooking the Salmon Falls River, near the border between Maine and New Hampshire. Approximately 565 students in grades Pre-K through 12 (and Post-Grad) attend this coeducational day school, from approximately 60 communities in the surrounding regions of southern Maine, southeastern New Hampshire and northeastern Massachusetts. == History == Berwick Academy was founded in 1791 when citizens of Berwick, York, and Wells (then villages in the Maine Territory of Massachusetts) raised $500 to teach languages, liberal arts and sciences to "the youth in this part of the country." Chartered by Massachusetts Governor John Hancock later that year and armed with a classical educational mission, the school opened in a small hip-roofed Georgian building on land donated by Judge Benjamin Chadbournes. Today this building, dubbed the "1791 House," is home to the Academy's admissions office. The 1791 House is the oldest school building in the United States that is still utilized today (Though the building has been relocated since it was built). From its founding the school contracted with the town of South Berwick to educate local students, serving both as a private college preparatory school and the de facto public school for the town. As the town grew and industrialized, the school's dual role necessitated campus expansion. A second Academy building (1830) was destroyed by fire in 1851; its successor, designed by architect Richard Upjohn, was itself superseded by the William Hayes Fogg Memorial Building. Built in 1894 by George Albert Clough in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, and built complete with electricity and state-of-the-art science labs, it remains the main Academy building today serving the majority of Upper School english, history, and foreign language classrooms(Science and Mathematics are taught in the Jeppesen Science and Math center. In 1955, the contract with South Berwick terminated and the school reverted to a purely private "prep school," featuring boarding for boys, a day department for girls, and college preparation on a classical model for both. Considerable physical expansion during this period included the acquisitions of surrounding homes for dormitories and of adjacent lands for playing fields. In the 1970s, the burdensome cost of housing students and the increasing suburbanization of northern New England dictated a further transformation from boarding academy to country day school. A Middle School was founded in 1971 and a Lower School in 1977; boarding was discontinued in 1976 and the dormitory-homes sold or converted to educational uses. In the subsequent decades the school's enrollment, endowment and physical plant have steadily increased. The school has come to occupy a unique academic position in between the 18th century American college preparatory school and the 19th Century progressive country day school – although it predates, sometimes by more than a century, most schools of either movement. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Berwick Academy (Maine)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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