It was only a few nautical miles from here, on the southern shores of Long Island, that the English Navy sent a forward fleet to seize New Amsterdam and claim a territory they would go on to rename “New York”.
More than 350 years later and the Brits are back — this time with an invitation.
Harrow School, the alma mater of Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Byron, is opening its first chapter in the United States, becoming the most prominent UK boarding school to plant its flag across the pond.
The finishing touches are being laid to the campus library and renovations to the boat house are halfway done, ready to welcome students this September.
The American cousin faces the daunting prospect of navigating the old-world traditions that gave the Harrow name its prestige with the modern updates needed to compete in a crowded US market.
Its founders have already been confronted with a number of cross-cultural conundrums to iron out: will pupils be made to wear Harrow’s trademark straw boater hats? American spelling or British? SATs or the International Baccalaureate?
Most importantly, will there be a squash court? (Harrow, of course, is believed to be the birthplace of the sport).
Are they daunted by the prospect? Not one bit, suggested its principal, Matthew Sipple, a headmaster’s son from New Hampshire, a state steeped in New England preparatory schools.
“We will retain many Harrow traditions, such as the values and the uniform, but also will follow the Harrow Standards, which allow the international schools to adapt,” he said. “It is this balance that makes each school slightly unique.”
Harrow New York opened its doors to prospective students for a tour this week.
The campus is set on 170 acres on the waterfront of Oakdale, handily at the halfway point between Manhattan and the wealthy Hamptons resort — though there is a good chance that parents of students have homes in both directions.
At the heart is the Georgian-style Bourne Mansion, built in 1897 for the president of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. It was later taken over by the US military and used as a training academy before being turned into a luxury wedding venue, evoking the Long Island louche of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby.
“It has a wonderful Hogwarts charm,” remarked the parent of one potential pupil (the “Wingardium Leviosa” levitation charm scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was actually filmed in the fourth-form room of the London campus). The father, who has a high-flying job in finance, is weighing up whether to send his son here or to one of the handful of other exclusive boarding schools on the island.
The school will welcome 60 students from grades 6 through 10 in September, increasing to 350 in 2028 when it tacks on sixth-form equivalent years. The cost for seven-day boarders is set at $75,000 (£59,000) a year, comparable to the £20,000 charged for each of the three terms in the UK, and $61,000 for day students.
Sipple is acutely aware of the long history of Harrow, which is second only to Eton in reputation and academic ranking.
The Free Grammar School of John Lyon was formed in 1572 in Harrow-on-the-Hill, Greater London, after being granted a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I.
Other notable Harrovians include Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. The school counts seven former British prime ministers among its alumni.
Alongside Sipple will be Kristine Lewis, director of boarding and pastoral care, who spent 17 years as a house mistress at the Sevenoaks School outside London and helped North London Collegiate School open its Dubai campus, and James Mower, director of studies, a graduate of Harvard who previously served as head of house at Harrow International School Bangkok.
“I’ve had top-tier faculty from around the world contact me,” Mower said (the school received 800 applications for the 14 positions advertised). “Harrow opening a school in New York is the biggest news right now in the international education community.”
To ensure Harrow International upholds standards, the mothership sent Nick Page, a former deputy head of Harrow, to New York, for tutoring sessions with Sipple and his team. Senior staff from the UK will return to perform two annual inspections, while a third will be done virtually.
Sipple said there would be plenty of breaks from the British way of doing things, however. For starters, girls will be welcomed and the school will teach the International Baccalaureate rather than A-levels.
And in an answer to the most searching questions: the Bluer and Greyers uniform is mandatory, boater hats will be worn but only for special occasions and, apparently, for the school’s promotional material. American spelling is in and Harrow’s infamous “double lines” writing punishment is most definitely out. And, yes, there will be a squash court. Other sports on offer will be “soccer”, baseball, basketball, tennis, netball and lacrosse.
Reaction has mostly been positive, but some alumni expressed concerns that it would dilute the school’s brand in a saturated east coast market. Parents, after all, already have the option of sending their offspring to nearby Andover, Exeter and Deerfield boarding schools, in some cases for $10,000 less.
“Harrow doesn’t send its own teachers to Harrow International Schools, nor any of its cool old paintings, or most of its traditions and vocabulary,” said Emily Sundberg, who writes a daily business newsletter called Feed Me. Harrow has lent its name to 13 affiliate schools in Asia in recent years. “That might be fine in Hong Kong, where the cultural cachet of a British education still resonates in specific post-colonial ways,” Sundberg said. “But in New York? It’s a hard sell.”
There are questions too about the timing. The latest expansion marks an uncharted foray in America at a time of unprecedented political turbulence.
Historically, prestigious boarding schools here have seen great interest from international students, particularly China, seeking a pathway to elite American colleges.
Sipple said the school was expecting a lot of applications from international families, as well as British and American ones. “We expect in a few years’ time that our students will come from over 50 countries with no one nationality in the majority,” he said.
But The Times spoke to parents who expressed concerns over the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal funding from top Ivy League colleges over student protests on campus, as well as its immigration crackdown: issues the funder of Harrow International, Amity Education, could hardly have foreseen when they injected a reported $100 million into the project in 2021.
“We’re right on the verge of student visas from China being denied and that would severely damage many American boarding schools and I think would cut Harrow off at the knees,” said Don McMillan, chief executive of McMillan Education, which advises families on applications to preparatory schools and universities.
“The shift began on January 20, but literally today I got a note from a dad in Kuwait we were doing American college planning with and he said he was going to pivot and just focus on the UK,” he said. “We also have a family from Luxembourg who wrote to us saying the two kids had acceptances in American schools but they decided to stay in Europe.
“Harrow will always have that pageantry and prestige others don’t, so we’ll have to see how far it takes them.”
