One Room Schoolhouse Park is a small park located on the southeast corner of
Astoria Boulevard and 90th Street in the
East Elmhurst
East Elmhurst is a residential neighborhood in the northwest section of the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded to the south by Jackson Heights and Corona, to the north and east by Bowery Bay, and to the west by Woodside and Ditmars ...
neighborhood of
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Its name recalls the site of Queens's last
one-room schoolhouse
One-room schools, or schoolhouses, were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. In most rural and s ...
, demolished in 1934. The schoolhouse was built only five years after New York State required compulsory education for children in 1874. Last called P.S. 10, the school was also known as the Bowery Bay School, after an earlier school established in 1734, and as the Frogtown School. Frogtown was a poor community located in a swampy area north of Astoria Boulevard, near the present-day
LaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City. Covering , the facility was established in 1929 and began operating as a public airport in 1939. It is named after former New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia ...
. Emma Fagan headed the school from 1879 to 1910. The 15 by 28 foot classroom had capacity for fifty-two students divided into six classes. The six rows of desks were arranged according to the age and ability of the students. The beginners were seated at the smaller desks in the front, while the more advanced students occupied the back rows. In the center of the classroom, a stove with a pipe extending to the roof that kept the space warm during winter.
By 1910, the expanding needs of immigrant populations and the reform movement that created the public education system had rendered one-room schoolhouses obsolete. The schoolhouse closed in 1925, but a temporary school building was still in use at the site when Parks acquired the .14-acre property from the Board of Education in 1934. Increased population in the neighborhood necessitated the construction of a new playground that opened to the public in December 1935. Subsequent decades saw the playground transformed into a sitting area. In 2015, the City Council allocated funding for the restoration of this park. The redesign of the park will commence following informational sessions to incorporate public input on the park’s features. Work on the renovation started in 2019.
References
External links
One Room Schoolhouse Park—
New York City Department of Parks & Recreation
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...
{{Coord, 40.763562, -73.87957, display=title
Parks in Queens, New York
East Elmhurst, Queens