The Professional Children’s School was founded in 1914 by two reform-minded New Yorkers, Jane Harris Hall and Jean Greer Robinson. Ardent theatre-goers, the women learned of the plight of the city’s professional children – young people working in the theatre in New York or “on the road.” They learned that public and private schools could not or would not accommodate the schedules of stage children and, more often than not, children were simply skipping school to work on the stage.

Determined to help these “unknown friends on the other side of the footlights,” as Mrs. Robinson would later write, the women decided to found a school especially for New York’s professional children. On January 6, 1914 PCS admitted its first two students in a rented room in the theatre district. An immediate success, the School enrolled over 100 students within the first year.

From the beginning, Professional Children’s School provided distance learning for students whose professional commitments required them to be away from school. Even in its earliest years, the school realized that the experiences and discovery which result from time away from school have their own educational value.