City-As-School
16 Clarkson Street | also 250 West Houston Street | West Village | built 1911
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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.
- 1938
Ferretti Cozzo's graduating class poses at Hudson Park Junior High School
In June 1938 a graduating class at Hudson Park Junior High School, the school then housed at 16 Clarkson Street, was photographed. The photograph later came to Village Preservation's historic image archive as a donation from the family of Ferretti Cozzo, a member of that class. The building is now City-As-School.
Source: Village Preservation
- 1972
Frederick Koury and Rick Safran found City-As-School to use the city as a classroom
In 1972 Frederick J. Koury and Rick Safran founded City-As-School on the idea that New York itself should be the students' curriculum. It was a transfer school for teenagers who had struggled elsewhere, and students earned credit through internships of sixteen to thirty-two hours a week at organizations across the city. The school later grew to nearly seven hundred students and about ninety teachers and administrators.
Source: Village Preservation
- 1978
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz spray SAMO graffiti, and Basquiat is expelled from City-As-School
Jean-Michel Basquiat and his schoolmate Al Diaz invented the SAMO tag as a joke at City-As-School, the alternative high school now based at 16 Clarkson Street, and drew SAMO cartoons for the school paper. In May 1978 they started spray-painting slogans on buildings in Lower Manhattan. That June, Basquiat was expelled from the school after pieing the principal.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1978
Student Jean-Michel Basquiat and classmate Al Diaz begin spray-painting SAMO tags in Lower Manhattan
In May 1978 Jean-Michel Basquiat, then a student at City-As-School, and schoolmate Al Diaz started covering buildings in Lower Manhattan with spray-painted graffiti under the name SAMO. Basquiat had developed SAMO as a character endorsing a faux religion, and the pair signed slogans such as "SAMO AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD." The following month he was expelled from the school for pieing the principal.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
Students and muralist Magda Love start painting the school's west wall, then wait two years for permits
Argentine muralist Magda Love, a mentor in the school's music and arts department, spent several months with students designing a mural for the school's bare west wall, which faced a vacant city lot above Third Water Tunnel construction. Days after painting began in 2016, the project snagged in red tape. It took about two years and twenty-five approvals from the education and environmental protection agencies before work could go on.
Source: Village Preservation
- 2018
Magda Love and Eduardo Kobra unveil the largest mural in New York on the school's west wall
City-As-School students worked with the muralist Magda Love to design a mural for the school's bare west wall on Hudson Street. Painting began in 2016 but stalled for about two years while the project collected 25 approvals from the city's education and environmental agencies. Eduardo Kobra later joined in, covering the wall to the south with tiled portraits of immigrants who came through Ellis Island. The mural was unveiled on November 5, 2018, as the largest in the city.
Source: Village Preservation
- 2018
The largest mural in New York City is unveiled on the school's west wall
Finished in 2018, the mural was unveiled on November 5 and covers 200,000 square feet. Magda Love's northern half draws on Mexican folk art, with a woman wrapped in colorful flora. Eduardo Kobra's southern half uses geometric painted tiles to show immigrants who came through Ellis Island in traditional dress, and students worked alongside both artists.
Source: Village Preservation
Further reading
- City-As-School High SchoolWikipedia
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