Lake Forest Academy

Lake Forest Academy (also known as LFA) is a co-educational college preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9 through 12. The school is located on the North Shore in Lake Forest, Illinois, United States, about 30 miles north of Chicago. As of the 2019–2020 school year, the school enrolled 435 students, with the students coming from 13 states and 35 countries. This school is among the most selective boarding schools in the United States. The current head of school is Tom Johnson. The school is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), and the Secondary School Admission Test Board (SSATB).

The academy (known as "LFA") was founded in 1857 as a key part of plans for Lake Forest more generally. In tune with the religious revivalism of the time period, the boys preparatory school was Presbyterian. LFA's first principal—Samuel F. Miller—had been one of the civil engineers who helped build the railway, as well as a founder of the Presbyterian Church in town. Early curriculum included Greek, Latin, Mathematics, English, Grammar, and Geography.

Life for early students was rustic. An outdoor pump provided water for drinking and washing. They recalled wandering and hunting in the ravines along Lake Michigan. In the years prior to the Civil War, the student body received military training from the eccentric Elmer Ellsworth. Ellsworth would go on to acquire fame for being the first officer to be killed in the conflict. Boys trained by Ellsworth enlisted in the war.

The Young Ladies' Seminary at Ferry Hall, later simplified to Ferry Hall School, was founded in 1869, and was considered a sister school. Lake Forest College was a third component of the original founders' design and opened its doors later although it uses the academy's founding date as its own. It has no formal relationship with the original schools.

It was during the leadership of Principal George Cutting (1887–1890) that the colors of orange and black were selected, perhaps influenced by the fact that Cutting had attended Princeton.

In May 1946, fire destroyed the school's main building. Headmaster E. Francis Bowditch telegrammed students and faculty with the following message: "You, not the buildings, are LFA. Carry on." In 1948, Lake Forest Academy moved its campus to where it is currently located, the large former estate of Chicago meat baron J. Ogden Armour. Armour had been forced to sell by the Depression of 1921, and a group led by Samuel Insull acquired the property.

At the celebration of the school's centennial in 1957, head of school Harold H. Corbin Jr declared, "The City of Lake Forest, born in an educational dream, should never allow itself to forget that in one vital sense it is a manufacturing town--not merely residential--and its sole demonstrable product is education." The poet Robert Frost and Princeton president Harold Dodds also visited campus and gave speeches during the festivities. A headmaster's residence was built on campus and named for General Robert E. Wood, the business tycoon whose advocacy for America First before World War II turned into a penchant for Joseph McCarthy in the postwar period.

A merger of the boys' and girls' schools formed the coeducational Lake Forest Academy-Ferry Hall School in 1974. The school's name officially became Lake Forest Academy.