For years, New York City Sanitation Department employees ate lunch in a three-story yellow brick building on West 17th Street in Chelsea, unaware of its history: It was once a “black” school. serving black Americans during apartheid in New York City public schools.
On Tuesday, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate the building, which was once known as Color School #4, as a protected landmark, and city officials said they would provide grant $6 million to restore it.
Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement: “We stand on the shoulders of the young men and women who have attended this school and while they may leave, I am honored to be assured that they will not. never forgotten.
The school, at 128 West 17th Street, is built around 1849and in 1860 it became one of eight public elementary schools for black students in Manhattan; schools serving a total of 2,377 students. The building also contains an evening school for black adults.
It was renamed Grammar School Number 81 in 1884, when the city’s Board of Education stopped using the term “colored” in the school’s name, but it continued to exclusively cater to Black children until when the city closed segregated public schools 10 years later.
The landmark designation comes as cities and states are grappling with how to address unflattering parts of American history, especially the history of Blacks, because of grievances. Modern equality persists in education and elsewhere.
While cities like New York seem to be moving towards talking openly about the past, others are moving in the opposite direction, fighting against such historical exposure by limiting how teaching about slavery and race in American classrooms. Florida’s Department of Education, for example, rejected dozens of social studies textbooks this month in an effort to remove material on controversial topics around race and social justice.
Sarah Carroll, chair of the Landmarks Preservation Committee, said in a statement that the former #4 Color Field represents “a difficult and often overlooked period in our city’s history.” The decision to mark it, she said, demonstrated “the importance of preserving places that tell the complete, sometimes challenging, story of our city.”
After the school closed in 1894, the building remained city property. Since then, it has been used for a variety of purposes, including a club for Civil War veterans of the 73rd Regiment. From 1936 to 2015, it was used as an auxiliary office and locker facility for the Sanitation Department.
City officials estimate that repairs to the water-damaged building will be completed by 2027. Officials said they will work with city agencies and local stakeholders to decide determine how to use it.
The landmark designation and funding for the building’s restoration came years after Eric K. Washington, a historian, began to urge the city Move to protect it. More than 2,800 people signed a petition in favor of.
Mr. Washington said he learned about the school while researching James H. Williams, chief porter of the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal, a group of Negroes who worked at the railroad station.
Mr. Williams attended School of Color 4 previously and would have been one of the last students at the school before the school closed, Mr. Washington said.
“I feel pleasantly exhausted,” Washington said in an interview on Tuesday. He said he has submitted two requests to the landmark committee for site reviews since 2018 and has received very little information since. “My fingers hurt from being crossed the whole time.”
Washington said he’s glad the city is protecting the building at a time when others are making “really meaningful, concerted efforts” to remove and ban black history teaching, which he says is an essential part of American history.
“I think the fact that this school and what it stands for being built in this great city will be a good example for localities across the country, so I’m excited about that,” said Washington. there.
While the Sanitation Department has expressed support for the school renovation, a spokesman said last year that officials do not have the money to do so.
Jessica Tisch, the sanitation commissioner, said Mr. Adams had “made an important investment in preserving an important piece of Black history in New York City.”
Ms. Tisch said officials will do their part to make sure “future generations know both about the harm caused at this site and about the resilience of the New Yorkers who have resisted it. “
A mob of working-class whites, unhappy with the first federal draft, and the fact that the wealthier was allowed to evade service, attacked the school during the July Draft Riots. in 1863, According to The New York Tribune. The teachers blocked the door, and the rioters eventually gave up.
Sarah JS Tompkins Garnet, the school’s principal, is credited with fighting that mob. She was one of the first Black female principals in the New York City public school system.
The school has a number of notable graduates, including Susan Elizabeth Frazier, who became the first Black teacher to work in an integrated public school, and Walter F. Craig, an antique violinist. dictionary.
“At a time when states are trying to erase Black history, we are celebrating it,” said Councilman Erik Bottcher, who represents a Manhattan borough that includes Chelsea. Saving the building is one of the “top priorities for the region”. “
A former “black” school, number 3 in Brooklyn, designated as a landmark in the late 1990s.
