Unlike suburban schools, the public schools constructed in the years following World War II in Manhattan were designed to accommodate the specific challenges and needs of the urban environment. These schools, now of preservation age, continue to be underappreciated resources.
During the spring semester of 2013, seven students in the Historic Preservation Studio at the Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation undertook a comprehensive survey to document and analyze the eighty-eight public schools built in Manhattan in the thirty years after World War II. The survey produced data on a diverse range of schools that proved to vary in significance; each however shed light on the history of post-war urban education in New York City. Additionally the survey yielded useful information on the conservation issues faced by these schools, which were often built using a combination of traditional materials and construction techniques and new materials and methods developed during and after World War II. Due to their dates of construction, many of Manhattan’s post-war public schools have become eligible for both local and national level designation. The timing is right for action, yet these buildings tend to be widely ignored or underappreciated by the public. The hope is that the survey and contextual research developed around Manhattan’s stock of post-war public schools will serve as a starting point for a more comprehensive study of all the public schools built in this time period in New York City.
The post-war wave of public school construction in Manhattan largely parallels school construction programs throughout the United States, but the reasons for this new construction were different in New York. Across the United States school building programs sought to provide adequate classroom space for the seemingly ever-increasing student body of the post-war baby boom. In Manhattan, the population of school-aged children only marginally increased and the construction boom was more indicative of a shifting population and issues of providing quality education to underserved communities. Ensuring an investment in both ethnically diverse communities and poorer neighborhoods was evident by the strategic number of schools built and the architects chosen for projects in particular areas of the city.In New York City, the public schools built in the post-war period offered an opportunity for the Board of Education to test new progressive educational theories that had first developed before the war. The eighty-eight schools surveyed represent the work of a variety of architects and a continuum of twentieth century architectural styles. Throughout the post-war period schools were continually designed in-house by Eric Kebbon, Michael Radoslovich and Arthur Paletta, the three consecutive architects of the Board of Education. Beginning in the 1950s, however, private architectural firms began completing work for the Board of Education in part to alleviate an increased workload but more importantly to expand design ideas. The contributing firms represented both locally significant architects like Kelly & Gruzen and those of national significance like Harrison & Abramowitz.
