The Browning School, the Upper East Side boys academy that graduated both Jamie Dimon and Paul Dano, and whose most recent quarterly newsletter, The Buzzer, featured a package on polo–including a student article titled “Polo: A Lifelong Commitment”–intends to expand.
The 122-year-old school has been interviewing brokers to represent it in a search for about 100,000 square feet of new school space, according to two industry members familiar with the interview process. Presumably, the school will relegate the search to its home turf on the Upper East Side.
This would not be the school’s first expansion. The K-12 academy has stretched in fits and starts since its founding in 1888 by John Browning, of whom, according to the school’s Web site, Browning alumnus John D. Rockefeller Jr. (pictured) once said, “I owe a great deal to him, more than to any other teacher I ever had.” In 1920, the school relocated from West 55th Street to its current location on East 62nd. Over the years, it gradually annexed neighboring buildings. Chauffeurs and parents now deposit their children every morning at 52 East 62nd Street, between Madison and Park avenues.
The school did not immediately respond to a request for comment. So it’s unclear what the school intends to use the new space for. But perhaps Browning has ambitions of moving itself up the hierarchy of exclusive New York private schools. Right now, as one graduate of the Interschool consortium of high-end academies put it, Browning “is at the bottom of the totem pole.”
