What Lies Beneath Friends School
Teigan first consulted with three likely authorities on the matter: Mr. Bonn, and two other longtime faculty members, math teacher Ken Fowler and Latin teacher Lisa Countess.
“There used to be, when I first started here, this little teeny weeny faculty room,” said Mr. Fowler, who came to Friends in 1998. “At that time, a lot of faculty smoked. So the first time I walked in, there was all this smoke around and faculty huddled together trying to eat food and smoke cigarettes.”
Fowler said he was unsure of the old faculty room’s location. But he was able to connect Teigan with Ms. Countess, a 49-year Friends School veteran with intimate knowledge of the school – and its secrets.
“You know where the girls’ bathroom is downstairs [in the present-day Upper School building]?” asked Countess.“That’s where the old faculty room was.”
“But it used to have an entrance, like as soon as you came down the steps,” Fowler said. “And they walled it off.”
“That’s right,” affirmed Countess. Then, she said something even more surprising. “In the floor there’s a trapdoor that leads to an underground spring under the building, and I think it goes all the way to Stony Run [Creek].”
With the school’s master key in hand, Countess took Teigan and Fowler down to the girls’ restroom off of Freshman Hall. She unlocked the storage room with a grin.
The room was small and dark. There were windows, with a few rays of sunlight sneaking in. The lights didn’t turn on, and the room was full of cobwebs and racks of textbooks. The trapdoor was on the floor, a grated panel that Fowler lifted with ease.
With the help of a flashlight, the trio was able to see the floor of the tunnel.
“Think there’s still any freshmen down there?” Fowler joked.
With the existence of the first tunnel confirmed, new secrets beckoned to be investigated.
Excited, our investigative team started firing off emails to various teachers. With each interview we did, we uncovered more and more rumors: the existence of an old scene shop tucked away in the ceiling of the Forbush building, an old dumbwaiter in the Upper School, and 9-foot wide tunnels under the turf field.
But we still had yet to see anything with our own eyes. That changed when we set up a meeting with Bill Smith and Carl Grant, both important figures in the history and maintenance of our school.
The team met next with these two important members of the school’s Facilities team, longtime campus caretaker Bill Smith and new Director of Facilities Carl Grant.
On a crisp day last November, Mr. Smith appeared in his uniform, looking ready to explore the underground. He smiled wide, preparing to welcome the team into a world behind Friends School’s walls and under its floors, that he knew better than anyone. Mr. Grant looked like his antithesis, with glasses perched on his nose, wearing a tie and jacket.
Together, they were preparing to give the team a tour of the Forbush building’s secret spaces – something we’d been working and waiting for for weeks. You could feel the anticipatory energy radiating off all six of us.
We started – where else? – in the ceiling.
In the back hallway of Forbush, outside of Helen Berkeley’s English classroom and close to the door to the Lower School, is the school’s old scene shop, where props for the plays were once stored.
The only way up to it is a folding ladder that dramatically descends from the ceiling in front of Forbush 249. Each member of our team took turns climbing the rickety ladder. Six years ago kids were coming up here? Writing on the wall? — Anneke Wagner '23
The room we entered was just how you would imagine an old attic. With exposed pipes and wiring, the vaulted ceilings gave way to a long, thin mechanical corridor. There wasn’t much room to move around, and we all had to dodge heating and cooling pipes.
Most of the walls were painted a traditional cream color, with a few rust-red crossbeams. The only sign that the space was once used by students was the graffiti.
“Six years ago kids were coming up here?” Anneke asked. “Writing on the wall?”
“Mm-hm. After the plays and during the plays, no supervision,” Smith responded.
The proof: alums Alex Young, Jeremy Turner, and many others had written messages (and their names) on the walls. The oldest dated graffiti we saw was from 1995.
Six years ago, the auditorium was remodeled, and the scene shop along with it. Sadly, most of the graffiti was lost during that renovation. Parts of the walls were replaced, and the graffiti on those walls was thrown out with the old material.
Smith led the team around corners and into corridors and rooms full of pipes.
“This is all the heating and air conditioning piping for the building,” he said. “It’s nice to work in a nice warm building, [but often] you don’t know where it came from.”
No one on our student team had any idea that this space even existed. We appreciate the warm air that comes out of the vents during the winter months, of course. But we had never stopped to think about where and who made it possible.
Although students rarely think about this either, Friends is a big, old school.
“We have 34 and a half contiguous acres of property here and about 17 buildings,” said Bonnie Hearn, who retired in July at the Assistant Head of Finance and Operations at FSB.
Its current site on Charles Street wasn’t Friends School’s first home. But when it moved to this campus, the pre-primary building was the only existing building.
The east Lower School building was built next, in 1929, followed by the main Upper School building in 1932. Next came the Old Gym in 1937. The most recent construction is the Middle School in 2005.
During our interview, Ms. Hearn eagerly pulled out old, battered plans detailing Friends’ campus at various stages in its lifetime. With the blueprints as her guide, she described each renovation the school has undergone.
“We took this existing footprint and built on top of it,” she explained. Rather than constructing new foundations, Friends’ campus was built on the bones of old buildings.
Which means, there’s a lot beneath it.
After our team descended the ladder from the old scene shop, we made our way to a mechanical room behind the orchestra room in Forbush basement.
As we rounded a corner, a gust of warm air blew into the room. We were lost in hallways we’d never previously explored.
Then, a lock clicked and a door opened, revealing a labyrinth of PVC pipe. For a few seconds, we stood mesmerized by the marvel of engineering hanging from the ceiling.
“Wow,” or “Oh my God,” it seemed like all the members of the team exclaimed as we entered the mechanical room.
“It’s like a giant puzzle,” said Smith, of the maze laid out before us. “This is like the heartbeat of the school, the heartbeat of heating and plumbing.”
Behind the captivating maze of PVC was a small cutout in the thick cement wall. Less than three feet tall, the entrance to another tunnel was fully visible.
We exchanged amazed murmurs as we walked closer. Even with a flashlight, visibility into the tunnel was minimal.
Smith told us this was just one of the tunnels under Forbush Hall. (There are other openings in the floor of art teacher Erin Hall’s office, and in the wall of the Information Technology office.)
“What’s your favorite?” Anneke asked Smith.
“My favorite?” he repeated. “Probably underneath the turf.”
“The field tunnel?” Teigan asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one. They’re cool. ‘Cause I could – I know Mr. Grant don’t wanna hear this, but…”
“Oh, here we go,” Grant said. “I’ll close my ears!”
“In front of the pre-primary,” Smith said, “I could go in the ground there and come out in the stream.”
Running under the turf are three parallel tunnels, Smith said. He described them as nine feet in diameter, wide enough to drive heavy machinery through.
“Each tube has a baffle in it like halfway up. And that whole, entire 400 feet, 500 feet [of tunnel is] full of water. So if that thing let loose? Mm-mm, bye-bye,” warned Smith.
Much to our disappointment, our team wasn’t allowed into the tunnels for safety reasons. Campus had received a lot of rain recently, and there was danger of flooding in the tunnels.
But Smith went down. He descended the ladder into the darkness with nothing but a flashlight. When he reached the bottom, he started to walk around.
At the base of the tunnel was a shallow puddle. With each step Smith took, new ripples radiated from his feet. He kicked one of the baffles, the half-wall used to hold flood overflow within the tunnels. It sent a deep, echoing, boom up to our team, silently peering down the hatch.
Smith only emerged once, to grab Anneke’s phone. He took a video depicting tunnel exploration through the eyes of a master plumber.
“I’ll meet ya at the stream!” he joked.
The footage revealed just how connected each tunnel was to its neighbor, and how each works to serve Friends School’s drainage system. It also showed graffiti on the walls of some of the tunnels, suggesting that, over the years, students may have found their way in.
We left the tunnel that day excited and giddy at what we’d learned. We also knew this was just the beginning. Our team didn’t have time to fully investigate all the rumors we heard about: of an old dumbwaiter in the Upper School building, an incinerator in the Lower School, and a Harry Potter-like “Room of Requirement” in the Middle School.
When we left Smith at the edge of the tunnel, we thanked him for his guidance and insight into Friends’ hidden spaces. Then we headed back to class, filled with a new appreciation for the complexity of our campus, and the workers who keep the heartbeat of the school going.
...to freshman hall boys' bathroom. Makes you wonder.
...to parts unknown. Possibly connects to the trapdoor in the floor of Erin Hall's office, and/or the one in the wall of the IT office? More investigation needed!
Much of the graffiti was removed during renovation. But some gems remain. One especially memorable offering reads: "Lorch Eats Ass."
"Wow" and "Oh my God!" was all you could hear when our investigative team entered this space.
...to Stony Run Creek. Helps contain runoff and potential floodwater.
Teigan, class of '23, likes to draw characters and edit written pieces. She is also interested in architecture and advertising, and she plays badminton.
Noa, class of ʼ24, is a journalism student who enjoys spending time with friends and family, playing Cupcake 2048, and reading.
