New York Architecture Images- Williamsburg, Brooklyn

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	New York Architecture Images- Williamsburg Brooklyn Formerly Public School 69, Brooklyn /originally Colored School No. 3
architect	Samuel B. Leonard.
location	270 Union Ave., bet. Scholes and Stagg Sts. E side.
date	1879-1881
style	Romanesque Revival
type	Education

images

The former Colored School No. 3 schoolhouse is a one-and-half story red brick building located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Built in 1879-81, it was designed by architect Samuel B. Leonard, the Superintendent of Buildings and Repairs for the Brooklyn Board of Education from 1859 to 1879. The only known "colored" school building remaining in Brooklyn, it evokes that city's policy of race-based school segregation during much of the nineteenth century. Romanesque Revival in style, the school building has arched window openings and a prominent entrance with large keystones, a raised central section with a gable and blind arcade, corbelled brickwork, and dentil courses. The exterior of the building remains largely intact. Colored School No. 3 as an institution evolved from the town of Williamsburgh's original African Free School, which had been founded prior to 1841. The school was taken over by the Board of Education of the City of Brooklyn in 1855, when it was given the name "Colored School No. 3." It was renamed P.S. 69 in 1887, and was later absorbed by the school system of the City of New York after the consolidation of 1898. The Board of Education relinquished control of the building in 1934. Special thanks to www.nyc.gov
An Italian Romanesque miniature for a school in Williamsburg's rural days. The Fourteen Buildings: The turn Grand Street takes at Union Avenue marks the beginning of the site of the Fourteen Buildings. The street was laid out between Union and Bushwick Avenues so that it would pass through the property of a group of men who then built for themselves a series of Greek Revival frame dwellings in 1836. Each had a dome and a colonnaded porch of fluted wood columns. The houses were arranged one per block on both sides of Grand Street with two extras slipped in. By 1837 each of the men had suffered the consequences of that year's financial panic, and the houses changed hands. In 1890 all fourteen still remained, but by 1896 only one was left. Today there is no sign on this busy shopping street of that bygone elegance apart from the bend itself.

contact	nyc-architecture.com
	with thanks to "The AIA Guide to New York",