History

Five decades ago, Gus and Marty Trowbridge set out to create an independent school where equality, social justice, a diverse community and the inspiration of Martin Luther King, Jr. would form the basis for children’s education. On September 21, 1966, 66 intrepid children from a range of backgrounds, races, ethnicities and socioeconomic circumstances walked through the doors of Manhattan Country School on East 96th Street to get an education that combined academic excellence with the idealism of social justice and equality; an education based on the philosophy that children learn best by doing, not sitting and listening; an education that sought to instill activist values in its children.

MCS has become a powerful model of education—under the leadership of Gus, until his retirement as director in 1997, and then Michèle Solá. In Michèle’s 23 years as director of MCS, she built on the formidable foundation set by Gus. Michèle strengthened the school’s academic program by expanding Spanish, science and math offerings. Under her guidance, activism became an integral component of students’ coursework. She also worked to build stronger curricular connections between learning at the MCS Farm and what takes place in our New York City classrooms.

Fifty years after opening, under the leadership of then Director Michèle Solá, Manhattan Country School moved to a new facility at 150 West 85th Street. MCS is neither an experiment nor a utopian vision. It is a reality—a school that has true socioeconomic, racial and ethnic diversity, thus providing its graduates with an academic education complemented by a deep understanding of the multicultural richness of the world.