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Shady Side Academy is an independent preparatory school located in the Fox Chapel and Point Breeze neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1883 as an all-male day school in the Shadyside neighborhood of the East End, the Academy now offers a secular coeducational PK–12 program on three campuses in the city and its suburbs, including weekday boarding in the Croft and Morewood Houses of its Senior School Campus. As of the start of the 21st century, Shady Side Academy is considered the most prestigious, most highly endowed, and most selective independent school in the western Mid-Atlantic.
Formed to provide for the education of the sons of newly moneyed industrialists of Pittsburgh's East End, the Academy counts the Frick and Mellon families among its early patrons. In 1922 the Academy expanded to its sprawling Georgian Senior School campus in the then-countryside of Fox Chapel under the influence of the Country Day School movement. The Academy merged with the Arnold School in 1940 to form its Junior School campus and added its stone Tudor manor-style Middle School campus in 1958, emerging in its current three-school system. The Academy admitted its first female students in 1973. Though described in character as a bastion of "old-world conservative" traditions, the school has in recent years affirmed its commitment to diversity and financial accessibility.
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