Kingswood is widely considered Eliel Saarinen’s architectural masterpiece within the educational and cultural complex he designed at the behest of founders George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth. The shimmering Green Lobby features a variety of mottled green tiles offset with and silver borders set in black mortar, and complimented by an exuberant Art Deco green and golden rug from Studio Loja Saarinen’s lead designer and supervisor Maja Anderson-Wirde and Egyptian revival wooden furniture by Eero. The two largest spaces, the Auditorium and Dining Hall, are joined by the Rose Lobby and each room is entered through massive leaded glass pocket doors. Children in boarding schools benefit from small classes and heightened interaction between students and their teachers. Figure 8: Kingswood Dining Hall with the Festival of the May Queen tapestry on the far wall, 2015.
Anchored by a four-story central block or tower, ringed at its upper level by a frieze of leaded glass windows, are the Auditorium and Dining Room. Photographer James Haefner. From the gateway to the building to the landscape, and from the furniture to the table settings and even its logo, Saarinen coordinated every aspect of Kingswood’s design.
When the commission was awarded to Eliel Saarinen, the Finnish American architect was given substantial freedom in the design of the school. Should you need help finding therapeutic boarding schools for boys, boarding schools for teens, therapeutic academies or therapeutic boys homes, please let us know. It is illuminated by riveted aluminum torchieres designed by Eliel and topped by stylized peacocks. His achievement of these goals is to the continued benefit of all who study, work, and live within this remarkable place. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives. June 2020. 2486453000, The official website of Cranbrook Kingswoods Cranes Athletics. Boarding school graduates often end up attending the finest universities. Parents looking to find the best boarding school can look here. This tour de force of handweaving in coral, green, and cream linen and wool was completed in sections over two years by Swedish immigrant weavers. The school has b –, Many of these schools are still enrolling during the, When to Consider a Therapeutic Boarding School.
Figure 1: Aerial view of Kingswood School and part of Kingswood Lake. Construction began on October 1, 1930, and classes began on September 21 the next year.
It was an experience Olkin doesn’t believe she would have been a part of if not for her early start at Cranbrook. The residential campus environment ensures that boarding school students are immersed in an educational world where learning is central to all activities. In contrast to the tall central tower is the low, one-story entrance loggia leading to the academic wing. Proceeding forward along a telescoping pathway (made up of colored cast concrete laid in a telescoping pattern) towards Carl Milles' Diana, on one side of the loggia are leaded-glass doors into the Green Lobby and on the other doors into the Weaving Room. Cranbrook School for Boys. Figure 7: Kingswood Auditorium, 2016. Photographer George W. Hance. Kingswood sits on the site of the first Cranbrook farm group (designed by Albert Kahn in 1904 and demolished by 1918), selected after initial studies for a girls’ school by George Booth and his architect son Henry.
Reflecting on his masterpiece some years after Kingswood opened, Saarinen wrote that he intended the school to be at once feminine and youthful, to fit harmoniously into the landscape, and to reflect a definite period of American architecture—neither of the past nor of the future, but of the current moment. Congrats Jordyn! Woodward Avenue can be seen in the upper left corner, 1931. Figure 4: Kingswood main entrance and Diana Courtyard, 2015. Inside the building, designing the school was a family affair unique in the history of American architecture.
It has been deemed one of the top preparatory schools in the country.