Morris High School

1110 Boston Road | also 1096 Boston Road | Morrisania | built 1901

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1900

    December 5

    The Board of Education issues bonds to build a Bronx high school first named for Peter Cooper

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    The city's Board of Education issued $469,383 in high school bonds on December 5, 1900, to Louis Wechsler, the contractor building what was then called Peter Cooper High School. The name honored the American industrialist who founded Cooper Union. Work on the building began the following year on Boston Road, a main thoroughfare chosen so the school would be easy for the community to reach.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1901

    C.B.J. Snyder's Collegiate Gothic school rises with a central tower about 189 feet tall

    Superintendent of School Buildings C.B.J. Snyder gave the school an H- or E-shaped plan in buff brick with limestone and terra-cotta trim, five stories over a high basement. Its central tower rises roughly 189 feet, with octagonal corners that become turrets and a two-story Tudor-arched main entrance at its base. An apsidal auditorium at the rear, its windows filled with stained glass, holds murals by Deming, Towle and other artists.

    “The great central tower, which can be seen from great distances, rises to a height of approximately 189 feet.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1904

    Morris High School opens as the first major public high school in the Bronx

    Completed in 1904, the building opened as the Bronx's first major public high school. By then its name had changed from Peter Cooper to Morris High School, after Gouverneur Morris and his family's part in the borough's early history. It was one of five Collegiate Gothic high schools the newly consolidated city school system built, one per borough, alongside DeWitt Clinton, Flushing, Erasmus Hall and Curtis.

    “…the building was completed in 1904, and was the first major public high school to open in the Bronx…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1955

    A three-story wing for food service and a gymnasium is added beside the auditorium

    The school's only major addition, a three-story wing holding food service and gymnasium facilities, was approved by the city's Art Commission in 1950 and finished in 1955. It stands next to the auditorium and joins the east pavilion along Jackson Avenue. Eric Kebbon, then the Board of Education's Superintendent of School Buildings, faced it in buff brick and limestone to match the original, though not in the Gothic style.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1982

    Part of a corner turret on the main tower is dismantled

    In 1982, shortly before the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the historic district around the school, the upper portion of one of the corner turrets on the main tower was taken down. At the time of designation the commission reported that it had not yet been determined whether the turret could be restored.

    “In 1982, prior to the designation of the district, the upper portion of one of the main tower's corner turrets was dismantled.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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