From the Archives

The Webb Experience

Over the years, thousands of students have passed through Webb’s halls, taking with them a host of memories of their time forging friendships, pursuing academic goals, taking on challenges in athletics, the stage or class competitions, and enjoying those magic in-between times that are the hallmark of an extraordinary boarding school experience.

In honor of Webb’s centennial, we have curated some images that show those experiences and the people who made them possible.

The Alamo

Campus Life

Theme Week: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. What is now a quintessential part of the student experience each year, Theme Week is a relatively recent tradition. Started in 2004, Theme Week is a week-long spirit competition between the classes – and sometimes the faculty.

 

Campus Life

Webb Day: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. On Webb Day, students compete in classes in contests that range from Earth Ball to Jeopardy.

 

Campus Life

Dorm Life: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Dorm life at Webb is one of the most distinctive aspects of being a student. The boarding experience stays with you for life, as do the memories. Studying with classmates. Listening to the radio. Watching movies with friends. Learning to do your own laundry. Baking cookies at your dorm head’s house.

Campus Life

Dorm Life: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Dorm life at Webb is one of the most distinctive aspects of being a student. The boarding experience stays with you for life, as do the memories. Studying with classmates. Listening to the radio. Watching movies with friends. Learning to do your own laundry. Baking cookies at your dorm head’s house.

Campus Life

Dorm Life: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Webb’s oldest dorm, The Alamo (shown), was built in 1936. The building’s east wing was added on in 1955. The largest dorm, Appleby, offers 34 single rooms.

Campus Life

Price Dining Hall: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Price Dining Hall is one of the centers of Webb’s community. Students, faculty and families share meals at common tables and celebrate special events and community dinners together. Price is known for the diversity of its daily food offerings, which range from grab-and-go bagels to a full hot lunch, soup, grill, noodle bar, panini bar and, yes, a soft-serve machine. But, more even than the food, it’s about the friendships that form in this space.

Campus Life

Athletics: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Athletics has been an integral part of the Webb experience since the very early days of the school. The sports program has grown to over 40 teams in up to 15 different sports. Everything from badminton to wrestling, football to soccer.

Campus Life

Athletics: Some of the best parts of the Webb experience happen outside of the classroom — from athletics to Theme Week and Webb Day, dorm life to theater arts. Athletics has been an integral part of the Webb experience since the very early days of the school. The sports program has grown to over 40 teams in up to 15 different sports. Everything from badminton to wrestling, football to soccer.

John RC Sumner

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

John R.C. Sumner, pictured above, was a member of the faculty at Webb from 1931 to 1959 and was the school’s first dean of students.

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

Ray Alf, shown above, said teachers were encouraged to develop their own ways of instructing their students and the result was a lively diversity from class to class.

 

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

Charles Work ’58 remembers “simply terrific” teachers at Webb. “The number of truly inspirational faculty members was astonishing for a place that small.”

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

Larry McMillin, faculty member at Webb from 1955-92, spoke of Webb’s giving “so much latitude to his teachers. This is what was so good. It was the idea of human development – he would never have called it that, but it was very much uppermost in his mind with the teachers and the students.”

 

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

When hiring new faculty, Susan Nelson would ask: “Do you really want to be at a residential school where we believe it’s just as important that you fill your advisor role and your residential role and your coaching role as you do your classroom role?”

Faculty

Teachers. Coaches. Advisors. Mentors. Dorm Heads. Leaders.

When Webb School of California opened in 1922, the faculty consisted of Thompson and Vivian Webb, along with John Sugg and Brooks Blaisdell, the son of the then-Pomona College president. Since then, hundreds of faculty have called Webb home, some for only for one year and some for many decades. All left a lasting impact on the Webb community.

David Offill, director of studies from 1992-98, remarked teachers are attracted to Webb because “there is in fact a fairly large element of freedom of approach and flexibility that is given to teachers if we are satisfied that students are getting what we want them to get from a classroom experience and the basic approaches are philosophically and pedagogically sound … I think energy and enthusiasm characterize most of our classes.”

Unbounded Spirit

If the climate and Thompson’s mood were promising, he would declare at morning chapel that it was a “Nature Day”. Classes were canceled and the boys could do what they pleased, preferably some outdoor activity.

It is with this same spirit that students have been venturing outside the classroom, off campus, and even around the world throughout Webb’s history.

 

Unbounded Spirit

No one inhabited the unbounded spirit more than Ray Alf.

Fossils were a hobby for Alf. In 1936, he took his biology class to Barstow to see what they could find. It was on this trip that Bill Webb ’39 quite literally stumbled upon a new species of fossil pig, or peccary. “It changed my life,” Alf said later. It also changed the lives of countless Webb students who were struck by the lightning of Alf’s enthusiasm.

In the decades since that monumental discovery, thousands of Webb students have taken part in annual Peccary Trips, unearthing thousands of fossils which are now housed in the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. Webb remains the only high school in the world to host an accredited museum of paleontology on its campus.

Unbounded Spirit

If the climate and Thompson’s mood were promising, he would declare at morning chapel that it was a “Nature Day”. Classes were canceled and the boys could do what they pleased, preferably some outdoor activity.

It is with this same spirit that students have been venturing outside the classroom, off campus, and even around the world throughout Webb’s history.

Senior trips exemplify this idea. Students trek to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite to challenge themselves against nature and dig into their own relationships in what has become one of Webb’s most iconic of traditions.

 

 

Unbounded Spirit

If the climate and Thompson’s mood were promising, he would declare at morning chapel that it was a “Nature Day”. Classes were canceled and the boys could do what they pleased, preferably some outdoor activity.

It is with this same spirit that students have been venturing outside the classroom, off campus, and even around the world throughout Webb’s history.

International trips have taken students into Central and South America, where the combined community service with language immersion and cultural education. They have taken them to Madagascar and the Gobi Desert to hunt for fossils. And they have taken them across Europe for explorations off the beaten path.

Unbounded Spirit

Unbounded Days draws upon Thompson’s desire for his students to get outside and learn from their surroundings. Through immersive, collaborative, relevant and deeply engaging journeys that connect the classroom and the broader world, students expand their understanding of what it means to think, create and reflect.

 

WSC Early Years

In 1922, when Thompson and Vivian Webb arrived to what would become the site of their school, they saw three clapboard buildings: a “club house” containing a dining room, reception room and common room; a small school house with library and classrooms; and a dormitory plus stables and an irrigation reservoir which also served as a swimming pool. Thompson, Vivian and their family camped out the first night they arrived before making the dormitory apartment livable. The campus they took on what the site of the Claremont Boys School which was built in 1919 but soon failed and was abandoned.

In this photo, taken in 1924, we see the impact of Vivian Webb’s beautification efforts. On the back of the photo, Thompson had written: “These buildings were here when I bought the property (20 acres) in 1922. They were in bad condition, surrounded with sage brush up to the windows. 2 years later we had repaired the building and cleaned up the land. Then we had this picture taken.”

WSC Early Years

Thompson Webb often relayed the tale of how he started the school on a shoestring budget. This photo is the first page of that oft-given speech, with his notes.

WSC Early Years

Advertisements like these were placed in local newspapers to recruit students. In his first year, Thompson enrolled 14 boys, seven who worked for their room and board and seven who paid $1,000 apiece. The Webb School’s reputation grew even faster than its physical plant. Within a few years, it was able to select new students from far more applicants than it could accommodate.

WSC Early Years

Jackson Library was opened in 1938.

Thompson said: “I dream of a great library on this campus. Not a library of stack rooms and index cards but a charming living room of comfortable chairs, with great books at arm’s reach such as a lover of books would like to have in his own home.”

When Thomas Jackson ’30 died of a heart attack his sophomore year at Caltech, his parents gave Webb the library as a memorial. Thomas’s dad, Willard, said at the dedication in 1938: “We give it to the school in loving memory of our son an in deep appreciation of all the school has meant in our lives.”

Jackson Library won an architectural award in the 1930s.

WSC Early Years

Thompson Webb built the Vivian Webb Chapel by hand — his and any one else he could convince to make the adobe bricks that make up its structure.

Thompson said: “I also dream of a chapel, a definite place of worship with an atmosphere of a place of worship.”

Before the Vivian Webb Chapel was built, Thompson held a chapel service every morning in the living room of his and Vivian’s home.

The Vivian Webb Chapel was a monument to his religious faith and to his love for his wife. Thompson laid the first brick in 1939. With the help of everyone, even prospective families, the chapel was completed in 1944. The Kimberly Tower was added in 1955.

“We built this chapel as the proper place for teaching the virtues that make the highest quality of character, honesty, dependability, strength to one’s duty, courage to uphold the right and to fight for it,” Thompson Webb said.

In the photo above, Thompson is working on the portico on the south side of the chapel.

 

WSC Early Years

Thompson Webb built the Vivian Webb Chapel by hand — his and any one else he could convince to make the adobe bricks that make up its structure.

Thompson said: “I also dream of a chapel, a definite place of worship with an atmosphere of a place of worship.”

Before the Vivian Webb Chapel was built, Thompson held a chapel service every morning in the living room of his and Vivian’s home.

The Vivian Webb Chapel was a monument to his religious faith and to his love for his wife. Thompson laid the first brick in 1939. With the help of everyone, even prospective families, the chapel was completed in 1944. The Kimberly Tower was added in 1955.

“We built this chapel as the proper place for teaching the virtues that make the highest quality of character, honesty, dependability, strength to one’s duty, courage to uphold the right and to fight for it,” Thompson Webb said.

In the photo above, we see the completed chapel in the 1940s.

WSC Early Years

Webb’s vision for the school inspired all who met him. Alf, who is so often credited with inspiring students himself, had this to say of the educator who hired him: “He was the heart and soul of it; he was Webb School.”

WSC Early Years

Webb’s first football team was created in 1924, the same year the school was accredited by the University of California and a year before the Webb House was built. The team scored its first touchdown in the last game of the season.

 

VWS Early Days

Vivian Webb School opened in 1981 as a separate institution on the campus of the Webb School of California. Community members advocated for the school after the closure of Claremont Collegiate, a private school in the area that served girls.

The decision was made to create a “coordinate” model school – a separate institution from Webb School of California that would be equal in all respects. This would ensure that even though the school was much smaller than WSC, it would be of the same order of importance and equal in rank.

Al Hastings ‘42 suggested Ann Longley as the first headmaster of Vivian Webb School.

Anne Gould, former Webb Board of Trustees member, said “I’m not at all sure that Vivian Webb as a concept, much less as a school, would have survived otherwise. Ann knew all the Webb people so well that she was able to come in and really take hold and pull things together. I think she was able to accomplish what nobody else would have been able to accomplish. It was Ann who created what is good and strong about the school.”

The students dedicated the 1982 yearbook to Ann Longley “for her uncompromising loyalty to the Webb Schools and for many ways she has improved the quality of a Webb education.”

Above is Ann Longley with some of the founding VWS students, known as the pioneers.

VWS Early Days

In 1981, Vivian Webb School opened with 34 girls – 13 in the freshman class, 21 in the sophomore class. In the spring of 1981, the first student enrolled in the newly founded Vivian Webb School, as recounted in the Webb School of California newspaper, the Blue & Gold.

VWS Early Days

Vivian Webb School classes were held in the Old School House, the oldest classroom building on campus. The building was renamed the Vivian Webb Campus Center.

 

VWS Early Days

Howell Webb told the founding VWS students: “You are the daughters Vivian Webb always wanted.”

 

VWS Early Days

Vivian Webb School class of 1984 students climbed Yosemite’s Half Dome during their first senior trip, a tradition that remains to this day. Christine Carr ’84 remembers arranging the first senior trek of the girls school: “It was interesting to take part in something that had never happened before, planning it all.”

VWS Early Years

Anyone who had been dubious about the girls school was one over in the first year years because the model worked. The girls were superior students, outscoring the boys on most tests. That competition sparked new efforts from the boys, elevating the entire campus.

In 1985, 34 girls became the first VWS boarders on campus.

Today, VWS and WSC enroll roughly equal numbers of students.