The Chapin School
100 East End Avenue | Yorkville | built 1920
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1928
Chapin School moves into its new building at 100 East End Avenue
In 1928 the Chapin School moved into a new building at 100 East End Avenue. It had begun in 1901 at 12 West 47th Street, with a faculty of seven and 78 pupils, then moved in 1905 to two townhouses on East 58th Street and in 1910 to East 57th Street. The East End Avenue building, at East 84th Street, has been the school's address ever since.
Source: chapin.edu
- 1928
Delano & Aldrich design a six-story Georgian school to hold Chapin under one roof
The original school at 100 East End Avenue was a six-story Georgian-style building designed by Delano & Aldrich. It reflected the belief of founder Maria Bowen Chapin that girls from kindergarten through twelfth grade should be taught under one roof. The school has kept to that idea ever since, enlarging this single building instead of spreading across a campus or taking space across the street.
Source: ourtownny.com
- 1935
Pearl S. Buck speaks to Chapin students about the situation of women in China
In 1935 the author Pearl S. Buck came to the Chapin School to speak about the position of women in China. The visit came in a year of change at the school: Mary Cecelia Fairfax, who had shared the headship with Ethel Grey Stringfellow since 1932, died that year, and Stringfellow became Headmistress. By then the school had occupied the East End Avenue building for seven years.
Source: chapin.edu
- 1969
Chapin buys the neighboring building at 535 East 84th Street for the Stringfellow Wing
In 1969 the school bought the adjacent building at 535 East 84th Street and named it the Ethel Grey Stringfellow Wing, after the longtime headmistress who retired in 1959 after 50 years at Chapin and died in 1970. Renovation of the wing was completed in 1972, and the Ethel Grey Stringfellow Library was dedicated that year.
Source: chapin.edu
- 1970
Students form a Multi-Media Club and report from the street with a videotape machine
In 1970 Chapin students started a Multi-Media Club, taking a videotape machine out of the building to report from the street. The school's own timeline places the club in the same year that Miss Stringfellow died. The printed student newspaper, Limelight, followed in 1976, when its first edition appeared.
Source: chapin.edu
- 2006
Chapin adds two floors atop the school where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis studied
In 2006 Chapin built its first vertical addition, putting two more stories on the original six-story building, which Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis attended as a pupil in the early grades, first through sixth. The result was an eight-story school of 132,328 square feet and 117 feet in height. The school's own history describes the same project as bringing a new arts center, science center and world language lab, finished and dedicated in 2008.
Source: ourtownny.com
- 2015
A $135 million expansion begins, and Community Board 8 votes to oppose it
In May 2015 Chapin began a $135 million build-out meant to last five to six years. Plans added three floors to make an 11-story building of 176,249 square feet, with a regulation gym, a lower-school cafeteria and new performing arts classrooms. Neighbors on East 84th Street formed the group Serene Green 84 against it, and Community Board 8 voted in 2015 to oppose the project, a position it had not reversed by 2017.
Source: ourtownny.com
- 2017
A state audit counts 122 noise complaints at Chapin's expansion site
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's audit of after-hours construction in 2017 singled out the Chapin School's expansion. The site drew 122 noise complaints between 2014 and June 30, 2016, and 112 of them came during after-hours work. The Department of Buildings had issued 100 after-hours permits for the school and renewed 24 of them, although homes stood within 200 feet. Neighbors also cited rats, parking and water outages.
Source: dnainfo.com
- 2021
New floors open with a regulation gym, dance studio and rooftop play space
In May 2021 Chapin officially opened the new floors and repurposed spaces created by its long expansion. They gave the school a regulation-size gym, a fitness center, a dance studio, a play roof and choral rooms. The opening came about six years after construction began in May 2015, and just after a pandemic year in which the school had started classes virtually in September 2020.
Source: chapin.edu
Further reading
- Chapin SchoolWikipedia
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