Pingry has been restless in geography but consistent in purpose. The school moved from its original Elizabeth schoolhouse to a Parker Road campus in 1893, the same year John Pingry died. In 1953, under headmaster E. Laurence Springer -- whose 25-year tenure from 1936 to 1961 remains the longest in the school's history -- Pingry relocated to a new $1.6 million facility in Hillside. That campus, now part of Kean University, served for three decades before the school moved again in 1983 to a rural setting in Martinsville, later renamed the Basking Ridge campus for mapping clarity. A 1974 merger with the Short Hills Country Day School added a Lower School campus, creating a K-12 institution. Most recently, in 2021, Pingry purchased the 82-acre former Purnell School campus in Pottersville for $5 million, adding a site for experiential learning. Each move reflected growth; none abandoned the founding emphasis on scholarship and character.

If Pingry has a living legend, it is Miller Bugliari. The soccer coach led the boys' program for more than 60 years, compiling 850 wins, 116 losses, and 75 ties through his career -- a record that ranked him second among all boys' soccer coaches in the nation. He was inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame in 2018. Under Bugliari, the boys' soccer team won state championships in 1995, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008, and 2014, and in 2007 the team climbed to fifth in the national rankings. The athletics facility that bears his name, the Miller A. Bugliari '52 Athletics Center, opened in 2017 with eight squash courts, two basketball gyms, and a weight room. His legacy extends beyond the win column; the World Cup Field named after him has hosted practice sessions for Italy's 1994 national team, the 2002 U.S. national team, and Ecuador's 2013 squad.

In March 2016, Pingry sent a letter to its community revealing that students had been sexually abused by Thad Alton, an employee from 1972 to 1978 who had come to Pingry through its merger with Short Hills Country Day School. The disclosure came after the law firm Crew Janci LLP had spent over a year investigating Alton's tenure on behalf of victims. Court documents revealed that Alton had been convicted for his abuse of Pingry students, and that after leaving the school in 1979 he continued teaching at Clarkson University in New York until his 1989 arrest for abusing more than 50 children. A group called "Pingry Survivors" published an open letter demanding full transparency, acknowledgment of suffering, and institutional reform. The school's 2017 investigative report substantiated 27 victims and revealed that at least one board member had learned of Alton's activities in 1979 but the information was never shared with the broader community. The episode forced a reckoning with how institutions protect their reputations at the expense of the people they are supposed to serve.

Pingry now enrolls 1,129 students -- 288 at Short Hills and 841 at Basking Ridge -- drawn from over 100 communities across twelve New Jersey counties. The student body is diverse: roughly 48% White, 22% multiracial, 18% Asian, 9% Black, and 2% Hispanic as of recent data. Middle 50% SAT scores range from 1290 to 1540, and the school claims an acceptance rate across all grades of 12%. Niche has ranked Pingry first among private K-12 schools in New Jersey and consistently in the top 1% nationally. The school fields 33 varsity teams and more than 70 teams total, with state championships in sports from swimming to field hockey to skiing. Among its notable alumni are Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr., race car driver Mark Donohue, actor Andrew McCarthy, economist N. Gregory Mankiw, and Olympic swimmers Matthew Fallon and Nic Fink. The school that John Pingry improvised into existence during a civil war has become one of the most competitive independent schools on the East Coast.