St. Bernard's School, founded in 1904 by John Card Jenkins, is an elite, private, all-male elementary school in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper East Side. The school shield depicts an eagle, a lion, a book, and a cross. Although the school's name is spelled the same way as that of the breed of dog, which is also its mascot, it was in fact named for the rue St-Bernard in Brussels, Belgium, where a relative of one of St. Bernard's founders had also founded a school.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by John Card Jenkins and Francis Tabor. Both graduates of Cambridge University, they had met after knocking heads on a soccer pitch. Originally on the upper floors of a small Midtown building, the school relocated to its current location on 98th street in 1915. The original 1915 building by Delano and Aldrich still stands, although it has undergone significant expansion and renovation, most recently in 1997. The current headmaster of the school is Stuart H. Johnson III. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University, he previously taught at St. Bernard's, and at Groton School, before becoming headmaster in 1985. Other notable faculty members have included David King-Wood,who directed the Shakespeare play for many years and is the namesake of an auditorium in the school and Gordon Bradley, who coached the school's soccer team.
Students
The school has three divisions: the Junior School consists of grades K through 3, the Middle School grades 4 through 6, and the Upper School grades 7 through 9. Mondays through Thursdays, boys in the Junior School must wear St. Bernard's polo shirts in either red, white, or blue, khakis, and a blazer. Boys in the Middle and Upper Schools must wear a polo or oxford shirt, accompanied by khakis and blazers as well. On Fridays, all boys wear jackets and ties. St. Bernard's alumni, known as Old Boys, earn admission to a wide range of secondary schools in the United States and the United Kingdom, both day and boarding. The schools attended with greatest frequency include Andover, Collegiate, Deerfield, Exeter, Groton, Horace Mann, Lawrenceville, St. Paul's, Stuyvesant, and Trinity.
Tim Zagat, founder and publisher of the Zagat Survey
In popular culture
The film Prince of the City referenced the school as the alma mater of one of the prosecutors charged with investigating police corruption. The film's cop protagonist remarks, "St. Bernard's. That's in the 2-3, that's, uh, little blond boys in blazers, right?"
In Season 2, Episode 13 of Lie To Me, Victor Musso, best friend and business partner of the deceased victim, takes to the stand to say, "We've been best friends since we were ten at St. Bernard's."
In 1936, James Merrill played the First Herald in St. Bernard's production of Richard II. Merrill recalled the experience in his 1985 poem "The School Play".
