page_title: Avery Coonley School
section_title: Recent additions
hierarchical_section_title: Avery Coonley School / Campus / Recent additions
caption_attribution_description: Performing Arts Center at the Avery Coonley School.
context_page_description: The Avery Coonley School, commonly called Avery Coonley, is an independent, coeducational day school serving academically gifted students in preschool through eighth grade, and is located in Downers Grove, DuPage County, Illinois. The school was founded in 1906 to promote the progressive educational theories developed by John Dewey and other turn-of-the-20th-century philosophers, and was a nationally recognized model for progressive education well into the 1940s. From 1943 to 1965, Avery Coonley was part of the National College of Education, serving as a living laboratory for teacher training and educational research. In the 1960s, ACS became a regional research center and a leadership hub for independent schools, and began to focus on the education of the gifted.
  The school has occupied several structures in its history, including a small cottage on the Coonley Estate in Riverside, Illinois, and another building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
context_section_description: A new wing was added in early 1980 to provide additional space for the arts, with a large room for orchestra and music and another for studio art. Filling in the previously open east side of the courtyard, the design is nearly identical in design to the original school, built of red and white-washed brick with a cloister on the courtyard side. The Gatehouse, which was built in 1929 and had served as the headmaster's residence, was remodeled to house the early childhood program in 1988.
  Increased enrollment in the late 1980s and the need for more space led to another addition in 1992. This addition included a new 17,500-volume library, a 16-station computer lab, and a 236-seat Performing Arts Center (PAC). Moravian tiles around the new foyer fireplace and library doors pay homage to the original building. The PAC "is known for its excellent acoustics", and hosts student productions and outside artistic groups, including the Beck Institute for the Arts, which stages musical recitals there.
  Avery Coonley added a full-day kindergarten program in 2005, again requiring more space, and a $4 million, 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m²) middle school wing was constructed, financed through tax-exempt bonds from the Village of Downers Grove. Its cream and red bricks, hipped roof, deep eaves, and detailed brickwork harmonize with the style of the earlier building. The project added modernized math and science labs, two computer labs, and seven wireless classrooms using tablet computer technology, videoconferencing, and computer controlled overhead projectors.
caption: The Performing Arts Center (PAC), part of the 1993 addition. Drama, music, and other performances are an integral part of the curriculum.
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