Colored School No. 4

128 West 17th Street | also 128A West 17th Street | Chelsea | built 1935

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. 1850

    The Public School Society builds a schoolhouse in Chelsea

    The Public School Society builds the school at 128 West 17th Street in 1849 and 1850, in a working-class Chelsea neighborhood of modest row houses. It first serves local children from English, Scottish, German, French, Italian and Irish families. The Society merges into the new Board of Education in 1853.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  2. 1863

    July

    Sarah Tompkins Garnet protects pupils during the Draft Riots

    By 1860 the building is a primary school for Black children, called Colored School No. 8 and then Colored School No. 4. During the Draft Riots of July 1863, a mob surrounds the school and tries to break in, and the teachers bar the street doors. Principal Sarah Tompkins Garnet, one of the first Black women to lead a city school, later escorts many of the children safely home.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  3. 1883

    February 14

    Principal Garnet's fire instruction keeps 150 pupils calm in a flue fire

    Principal Sarah J. S. Garnet, widow of the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, has long told her pupils how to react if a fire breaks out. When a flue fire starts on February 14, 1883, about 150 children march down the stairs in lines to the courtyard without panic. The fire is put out quickly and the students return to their desks.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1896

    March 24

    Civil War veterans lease the closed school as a clubhouse

    After the Board of Education asks in 1894 to sell the building, then Grammar School No. 81, it sits unoccupied the next year. On March 24, 1896, the city leases the ground floor to veterans of the 73rd Regiment for a clubhouse. In 1921 the Veteran Fire Association takes over the upper floors and calls them Firemen's Hall.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2023

    May

    The city designates the school a landmark and funds its repair

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the former Colored School No. 4 a city landmark in May 2023, after community support led by independent scholar Eric K. Washington. Mayor Adams allocates $6 million toward rehabilitating the building. Village Preservation calls it the last tangible relic of the city's racial-caste public school system.

    Source: Village Preservation

Further reading

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