Penn Charter Celebrates 100 Years at Pinehurst

“Looking back over my seven years at Penn Charter at Eight S. Twelfth Street, the day that comes to my mind as the most outstanding is the one when we were called back to assembly shortly after our regular morning assembly had been dismissed. Our beloved Headmaster … announced that we had been willed twenty beautiful landscaped acres at Queen Lane where our playing fields would soon be located and where the school would eventually be moved. We were instructed to go right over to Broad Street Station, where a special train would be waiting to take all 500 students to Queen Lane so we could look the grounds over. It was as happy a group of boys as you would want to see, although most of us realized that we would be graduated before the school could be moved from the heart of Philadelphia to this beautiful location.” 

– Richard P. Cuthbert OPC 1904 

The sentiment above was excerpted from an essay titled “Looking Back to the Turn of the Century” and appears in the book Old Penn Charter, a collection of anecdotes documenting Penn Charter’s history and the many individuals who had an impact on the first 300 years of William Penn Charter School’s existence. 

The anticipation that began in 1903 would last for more than two decades. 

By the year 1897, enrollment had skyrocketed – from 17 students in 1689 to well over 400. Headmaster Richard Mott Jones knew his students needed more space and was anxious to have a plan in place to secure appropriate indoor and outdoor facilities for his burgeoning student body. He would not need to wait much longer. 

Following the passing of two Quaker women, Sallie M. Waln and Clementine Cope, the latter of whom was the sister of overseers Francis Reeve Cope and Thomas P. Cope Jr., Penn Charter was willed a 35-acre estate in “the country,” known as Pinehurst. 

The campus stood, waiting for occupants, until 1923, when the school finally made an advantageous sale of the 12th Street property. But those 20 years were not in vain, as the school spent considerable time and resources ensuring that the building, the classrooms and the fields would have the very best materials and resources when students would finally occupy those spaces. 

The anticipation was palpable for the boys and young men of Penn Charter during the early 1920s. They had outgrown their campus and were ready for a more modern, spacious home, where they could learn and play, study and explore all across one expansive, green campus. And that day, Sept. 23, 1925, the first official school day on the Pinehurst campus, was filled with excitement. 

“We have all experienced many more or less memorable events but one that will remain in our minds much longer than most all others is the day that the William Penn Charter School opened wide its doors for the first time at Pinehurst,” read the Penn Charter magazine in 1925. 

Students were also thrilled with the modern new building—“the last word in academic up-to-dateness”—and determined its “splendid edifice whose tower pierces the air” would be dedicated to all who lived and worked with the “spirit of Penn Charter instilled in them.” 

This fall marks 100 years since that momentous day, and Penn Charter’s campus footprint, student body and program have continued to grow. The 2025-2026 school year opened with a record 1,021 students—students who are able to benefit from the dedication, foresight and investment of so many academic leaders and innovators who understood the power and impact of a Penn Charter education. 

“That spirit of generosity and vision has been a longstanding hallmark of the Penn Charter community and is what allows us to proudly celebrate the 100th year of students attending our storied school on the current Pinehurst campus,” Head of School Karen Warren Coleman shared in her Commencement 2025 address. “This monumental time in our history is truly cause for celebration—this community has been blessed with generations of former and current leaders whose generosity has positioned us well for the future.” 

The size of the school may fluctuate and expansion may take place, but what has not and will not change is the sense of belonging that has always been at the heart of the Penn Charter experience. 

As Cuthbert shared in 1904, “It is one of the greatest satisfactions of my life that I was privileged to have spent those formative years at Penn Charter, and I am proud to be one of the many grateful graduates … I remember and cherish most of all the acute feeling of belongingness … that permeated the school. It was as if there was an unseen spirit that bound us one to the other. I feel it even today.”