Do Certain Places Retain the Essence of those who came Before?
Andy Vadnais, Head of School
As head of the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York, I find myself wondering about the structures and buildings that make up the fabric of our campus, especially after a student or member of the faculty makes a particularly poignant observation about matters of empathy or social justice.
You see, my school exists now in the buildings and on the hallowed grounds of what was at one time the most successful Utopian community in 19th-century America — the Mount Lebanon Shakers (1785–1932). In fact, before the Shakers here “went out” (as they termed it) they helped establish a school — The Lebanon School for Boys — to inhabit their buildings and maintain their grounds. To accomplish this, they turned to a few of the leading minds in independent school education at the time — Frank Boyden (Deerfield Academy), Horace Taft (The Taft School), and George Van Santvoord (The Hotchkiss School). The Lebanon School was transformed into the Darrow School later in the 1930s.
Darrow is not a Shaker school, but it does hold fast to many of the Shaker ideals of hard work, racial and gender equality, and social justice. Passing on some of the Shaker values to new generations of students despite rapid societal change has always been an important goal for Darrow’s leadership. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from a pamphlet supplied to each new Darrow student throughout the1960s and early 1970s:
This New Lebanon society was not only the oldest, but the strongest, most important, and largest, of the societies. It was the model which others followed, and once had six hundred people, a hundred buildings, and six thousand acres of land. Almost entirely self-sustaining, the Shakers grew their food, flax and herbs, they built their buildings, made their clothes, drugs, equipment, furniture, stoves, and tools ; they provided their own dyes, lumber, waterpower, instruction, and entertainment. . . . [The Shakers] believed in purity of mind and body, honesty, and integrity in words and dealings, and humanity and kindness to friend and foe.
Darrow graduates from each generation tell me that spending time in our historic buildings and walking the lovely campus grounds definitely changed them, in subtle and good ways.
How does Darrow School carry on this tradition today? In addition to living and working in our National Historic Landmark campus, the School maintains distinctive programs derived from our Shaker heritage. For instance, each Wednesday morning, from 9–12 noon the entire community sets their hands-to-work through a range of work crews — from managing our sugarbush and sugar house to tending our fields, forests, and trails. Other crews (in non-COVID times) nurture animals at a local humane society or read to children in the elementary school in town. The School also has clubs interested in promoting racial, gender, and religious identification.
Darrow is a happy school — a place where kids enjoy living and learning. Here is a 19th-century Shaker saying that matches with this:
When we sow words and deeds of kindness, We will rejoice in the time of our harvest.
That I am not the only one interested in this concept of a lingering essence was brought home to me the other day when I stumbled upon a blog post by a Darrow alumnus from the early 1960s. In an entry for Thursday, May 1, 2008, he wrote the following as he reflected back on his time at Darrow:
The Shakers built the houses in which we lived. They’d made the pegs on which we hung our clothes and cleared the fields on which we played. The inhabitants of the New Lebanon Society had died off long ago, but we lived with their spirits, surrounded by their architecture and ingenuity.
— A. Parker Burroughs
