A school built for Black children during slavery becomes a NYC landmark

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission noted that Black children used Colored School No. 4 as a schoolhouse between 1860 and 1894.

A new landmark has emerged in New York City: A school constructed for Black kids during slavery.

According to NBC News, Tuesday saw a unanimous decision by a New York City preservation committee to protect the former Colored School No. 4 by designating the three-story yellow-brick structure as a landmark.

Historian and urban planner Eric K. Washington filed a request in 2018 to get the 175-year-old building on West 17th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea district evaluated and given formal historic status. Four years later, he launched a petition and led a grassroots movement that gathered more than 2,800 signatures.

“I think that the fact that this school and what it represents is being landmarked in this major city will serve as an example to locales across the country,” Washington said, The New York Times reported, “so I’m thrilled in that regard.”

Washington expressed his gratitude to the city for defending the structure when others are attempting to suppress and outlaw the study of Black history, which he termed a crucial component of American history, according to The Times.

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission noted that Black children were educated at Colored School No. 4 between 1860 and 1894. The building, which was constructed in 1849 and 1850, also accommodated Black adults for evening school.

Sarah Carroll, head of the Preservation Commission, said the site symbolizes “a difficult, often overlooked, period in our city’s history.”

She added that the choice to designate it as a landmark proved how crucial it is to preserve the places that depict the city’s complete, occasionally complex history.

NBC reported the school also provided children a safe haven during the 1863 New York Draft Riots. Suffragist Sarah J.S. Tompkins Garnet, the school’s principal, was the first Black woman to hold that position in the New York City public school system. 

According to The Times, the school was renamed Grammar School No. 81 in 1884 after the city’s Board of Education stopped using “colored” in school names. However, it continued to enroll Black students until the city shuttered segregated public schools a decade later.

The structure remained city-owned and has been used for various functions, including as a club for Civil War veterans. It served as a satellite office and storage space for the Sanitation Department from 1936 until 2015.

NBC reported that New York City Council member Eric Bottcher and neighborhood groups pushed for the school’s designation. Brooklyn’s Colored School No. 3, another historically segregated school from that time, became a landmark in 1998.

According to The Times, the city will contribute $6 million toward preserving Colored School No. 4, which officials anticipate will be fully restored by 2027.

“We stand on the shoulders of the young men and women that attended this school,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement, The Times reported, “and while they may be gone, I am honored to ensure they will never be forgotten.”

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