Curtis High School
105 Hamilton Avenue | also 105 St Marks Place | St. George | built 1904
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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.
- 1845
A hilltop villa later owned by horticulturist John C. Greene stands where the school now rises
Before the school, this hilltop was part of land once owned by Daniel D. Tompkins, later folded into the New Brighton suburb begun in 1835. By 1845 a villa stood on the spot now taken by the original school building, and around 1850 it passed to John C. Greene, a wealthy New York merchant and keen gardener. The Horticulturist, the journal edited by Andrew Jackson Downing, described his greenhouses and gardens and praised the views over New York Bay.
- 1904
Curtis High School admits its first students as Staten Island's first public high school
When its doors opened to students in February 1904, Curtis gave Staten Island its first public secondary school; until then the island had only small high school departments inside three of its public elementary schools. It was also the first public building completed among those planned for the new borough formed when Staten Island joined New York City in 1898, which the landmarks report sees as the start of a new epoch in the island's history.
“When it opened in 1904, Curtis High School was Staten Island's first public secondary school.”
- 1904
C.B.J. Snyder crowns Curtis with a Gothic entrance tower guarded by carved owls
The five-story tower at the center of Snyder's original building projects from the main block and holds the main entrance, a pointed arch whose spandrels carry carved foliage and New York City seals beneath a band inscribed with the school's name. The piers on either side end in carved owls, long a symbol of wisdom, and the top of the tower finishes in blind arches and a stepped limestone parapet.
- 1925
Curtis finally gets a chapel-like auditorium after two decades of making do
An auditorium planned behind the original building was never built because money ran short, so until 1925 a big fourth-floor room served as both gym and assembly hall. The north wing, finished that year from Snyder's 1919 plans two years after he retired, put a gymnasium below an auditorium modeled on English Perpendicular Gothic chapels, with a copper-clad spire and towers topped by onion-shaped domes.
“Until 1925 a large fourth floor room in the original building doubled as a gymnasium and auditorium.”
- 1982
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates Curtis High School a city landmark
The commission named the school a landmark on October 12, 1982, after a hearing on September 9, 1980, at which one witness spoke for designation and nobody spoke against it. The report singles out the school's opening as a turning point for public education on Staten Island and credits Board of Education architect C.B.J. Snyder with its Collegiate Gothic design.
“One witness spoke in favor of designation. One letter was received in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition…”
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