The Lycée Revisited

Nearly Seventy Years Later!
By Gabrielle Griswold (on right, Promotion de 1944)

When my former schoolmate, Hilda Beer Grauman (Promotion de 1942) and I decided to revisit our beloved Lyçée this past July, we knew that in reality we would be experiencing a totally new school. In contrast to the elegant, intimate 18th-century-style townhouse at 3 East 95th Street, where our classrooms were former bedrooms (complete with rococo wall sconces, period boiseries, and marble fireplaces), we would find a purpose-built, state-of-the-art, very different, very modern building.

Seven decades earlier, the Lyçée's entire student body had numbered little more than one hundred of us altogether, compared with well over a thousand today. Thus, a greatly expanded building would not only hold many more students and teachers, it would also accommodate vastly expanded programs, including athletics, science, music and drama.

That, indeed, is what we found. Guided through the new building by Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Relations Claude Aska, we marveled at its extensive gymnasiums (even the smaller gym is one more than our old school possessed); its bright, handsome cafeteria (in our day we lunched in basement rooms); its wonderfully spacious auditorium/theater/concert hall; and its airy classrooms, with their multi-media smart boards, internet connectivity, and window walls that let in natural light and retract to admit fresh air and sunshine. One architectural feature we particularly admired was the ‘green' element in the building's design, notably the grassy, tree-lined patio which constitutes its lungs, much as Central Park serves as lungs for Manhattan.

A school, of course, is more than walls and windows. But, in July, we had no chance to see it in full action. However, judging from the care that went into the building's planning and design, we were struck by the fact that here once again is an attractive learning environment that must be as motivating to today's students as ours had been to us, beautiful and empowering in altogether different ways.

We were further pleased with the school's diversity. While our old school was diverse for its time, it is heartening that some fifty different nationalities attend today. Considering that diversity broadens horizons, breeds tolerance, reduces peer pressure and fosters individuality, I wish that schools everywhere could be as diverse as the present Lyçée.

Finally, satisfied that our old school in its new incarnation is still a serious and a happy place, Hilda and I left with our heads full of memories—some old, some freshly minted—and our hearts full of joy at the thought that today's Lyçée students have such a positive space in which to pursue their education.

Revisiting the past is not always so successful, but both of us would recommend that other alumni not wait as long as we did to return to their old school, whether or not its present walls are the ones they remember. For us, it was a wholly cheering experience.

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