Manhattanville, 126th Street Between Morningside and St. Nicholas Avenues

Mary Sargent © 2009 ………. click to enlarge

This is the last block in Manhattanville and it's a short one, so I'll take care of it in one posting. I couldn't seem to resist white buildings against blue skies today. Here's another.





Mary Sargent © 2009 …………….. click to enlarge

Just down the block is this imposing building with no clue as to what it is. I played a guessing game until I got to the corner and saw the front of it.




Mary Sargent © 2009 …………………………………….. click to enlarge

PS 157! An elementary school, at that. That is, it was. It closed in 1975 and then gradually deteriorated until it was rebuilt as apartments in 1989. Don't you just wish you could live in something other than a boring old apartment building? This school looks like a good bet, with its 15' ceilings and beautiful windows. I don't know if it's still true, but in 2000 this was called the gay building because so many gays had moved in.

Streetscapes had a good article on this school in 1989. It seems that prior to the 1890s, schools were built in a factory style as befitted the idea of "the school life of a child as a grinding, manufacturing process . . . ." A new school architect, Charles B. J. Snyder, was appointed in 1891 and began building schools that would have an uplifting effect on the city's poor and working class sections, this being one of them.

See map.