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The Advent School at Charles Circle

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

THE BEACON HILL TIMES

THE ADVENT SCHOOL LEASES FORMER OFFICE BUILDING ON CHARLES CIRCLE

School will use New Space to Expand Curriculum

BOSTON, Mass.—The Advent School, now in its forty-ninth year on Brimmer Street, has entered into a multi-year lease for the use of a former office building at 99 West Cedar Street, just off Charles Circle at the foot of Beacon Hill.

Advent will use the building to create additional space for curriculum explorations in Art, Engineering, and Design; as well as a center for Faculty Research and collaboration. The new setting is designed to enable teachers to push the boundaries of children’s thinking, and inspire students to imagine new possibilities in all of their learning.

The school is working in collaboration with Utile, Inc. architects of Boston on the design work.

Interior renovations to the two-story, 5,400 square foot building will begin shortly in order to have the space ready for the September 2011 opening of school, according to the school’s head, Nancy Harris Frohlich.

“This is an exciting development for all of us here at Advent. As we head towards our fiftieth year on Beacon Hill we are very mindful of our history and our connection to this community. With the success of our Early Childhood Center, begun in 2004, we have seen our enrollment grow in such a way that we had to plan for a day when we would need additional space. Our intention is to continue to offer the kind of curriculum we think is essential to a child’s learning in a world where the pace of change just gets faster,” said Harris Frohlich.

Mark Cohen, the chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees that has been overseeing the painstaking search for the right opportunity to secure additional space, said the process had stretched out over a number of years because of very specific search criteria, the primary one being a location on Beacon Hill.

“We are committed to remaining in this community. There was never a question about that. But as a small school that intends to remain small, and because our resources are quite finite as a result, it was really a challenge for us to find the right kind of space that would serve our student’s educational needs, the needs and expectations of our families, and be a good fit with our larger Beacon Hill community. We think we have accomplished that with this new satellite space, and we look forward to it coming alive with the sound of Advent students and faculty next September,” Cohen said.