P.S. 157 is a historic school building located at 327

St. Nicholas Avenue __NOTOC__ St. Nicholas Avenue is a major street that runs obliquely north-south through several blocks between 111th and 193rd Streets in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The route, which follows a course that is much older than the grid ...

between West 126th and West 127th Streets in the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It was built from 1896 to 1899 and was designed by

C. B. J. Snyder Charles B. J. Snyder (November 4, 1860 – November 14, 1945) was an American architect, architectural engineer, and mechanical engineer in the field of urban school building design and construction. He is widely recognized for his leadership, i ...

in the

Renaissance Revival style Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range ...

. It ceased being a school in 1975, and was converted to rental apartments in 1993.

History

P.S. 157 – "P.S." stands for "Public School" – signified a philosophical change in school design from what the ''Real Estate Record and Guide'' described as a tradition of "the school life of a child as a grinding, manufacturing process to which the factory style of building is eminently suitable." In 1891 Snyder took over as chief architect for the city's schools from George Debevois, whose buildings the ''Guide'' called "warehouses" that were a "civic disgrace." Work on the school began in 1896, and it opened in 1899 to 1,974 students in 45 classrooms. Unlike Debevois' "factories", P.S. 157's design is derived from French and Flemish civic architecture. The limestone, brick and

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

building features dormers and a red tile roof, and could pass for a group of row houses if it was smaller in scale. The building functioned as a school until 1975, when it became vacant, and was subject to vandalism. The drive to rehabilitate the building and covert it into apartments for low- and middle-income families began in the late 1970s, led by New York state's Harlem Urban Development Corporation and the city's Department of Housing, Preservation and Development. Work began on the project c.1989Gray, Christopher
"Public School 157; A Conversion to Serve Another Generation's Needy"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' (April 18, 1989) and was completed in 1993.Alberts, Hana R
"Live In A Historic Converted Harlem School For $2,300/Month"
''CurbedNY'' (February 11, 2014) The building now consists of 73 rental apartments, some of them rent stabilized, on five floors. P.S. 157 was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on December 10, 1982.

References

Notes School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan Renaissance Revival architecture in New York City School buildings completed in 1899 1899 establishments in New York City {{Manhattan-school-stub

History

See also

References