Sarah Lawrence College

Establishment and development (20th century)

Sarah Lawrence College was established in 1926 by the real-estate mogul William Van Duzer Lawrence on the grounds of his estate in Westchester County and was named in honor of his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence. The college was originally intended to provide instruction in the arts and humanities for women. A major component of the college's early curriculum was "productive leisure", wherein students were required to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as modeling, shorthand, typewriting, applying makeup, and gardening. Its pedagogy combined independent research projects which were individually supervised by the teaching faculty, and seminars with low student-to-faculty ratio, a pattern that it retains to the present. Sarah Lawrence was the first liberal arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs.

Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College from 1945 to 1959, influenced the college. Taylor was elected president at age 30, maintained a friendship with the educational philosopher John Dewey, and worked to employ the Dewey method at Sarah Lawrence. Taylor spent much of his career calling for educational reform in the United States, using Sarah Lawrence as an example of the possibilities of a personalized, modern, and rigorous approach to higher education.

Sarah Lawrence became a coeducational institution in 1968. Prior to this transition, there were discussions about relocating the school and merging it with Princeton University, but the administration opted to remain independent.

Larry Ray scandal (2010)

Starting in September 2010, after being released from prison Larry Ray, born Lawrence Grecco (then 50), resided in the on-campus student housing dormitory apartment of his daughter, Talia Ray, in Slonim Woods Building 9. At the time, Talia was a sophomore at the college, and lived in the dorm with seven other students. Sarah Lawrence College later told New York Magazine that it was not aware that he had been living on campus. While there, Ray started a sex cult in which he presented himself to students as a former U.S. Marine with training in psychological operations. In 2011, he induced some students to move into the apartment of Lee Chen in nearby New York City. In 2013, four of Ray's victims graduated from Sarah Lawrence. In February 2020, he was charged by prosecutors in Manhattan with conspiracy, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and other related offenses, following nearly 10 years of alleged transgressions with students and former students. Ray was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

College presidents

The first president of the college was Marion Coats, serving from 1924 to 1929. She was a friend of Vassar College president Henry MacCracken and William Van Duzer Lawrence. Coats had traditional views of women's role in society that were at odds with her progressive approach to women's education. Cristle Collins Judd was introduced as president in 2017.

The Barbara Walters Campus Center is the newest building on campus. Finished in the fall of 2019, the building is named for alumna Barbara Walters. The building is a multipurpose space which is used for dances, speeches, class gatherings, etc. On the second floor is the Barbara Walters Reading Room. It includes a rotating exhibition, but currently holds artifacts from Barbara Walters' life. The building has a green roof energy efficient LED lighting.

Bates Center for Student Life is one of the original campus buildings. Designed in the English Tudor style that was begun by Bates and How and extended by Penrose Stout in the 1930's. It housed offices and classrooms and maids' quarters to dining halls to laboratories and arts facilities. At one time, it was home to a miniature basketball court that is now a faculty dining room, though the lines of the court can still be seen on the floors. Over the years, programs in science, visual arts, and physical education have grown to the point that they also are elsewhere on the campus, requiring three buildings of their own. Bates has always been home to the college's main dining facility and also houses the popular "Health Food Bar."

The Esther Raushenbush Library, designed in 1974 by Walter, Burns, Toan & Lundein in a modern architectural style with implied buttresses and features of its much older neighbor, Andrews House. The Raushenbush Library houses over 300,000 volumes.

The Alice Stone Ilchman Science and Mathematics Center, completed in 1994, is situated on the far north end of the campus. It houses science laboratories in addition to classrooms and faculty offices. The building is named for former president Alice Stone Ilchman.