Herman Ridder Junior High School

1619 Boston Road | also 1619 Crotona Park East | Crotona Park East | built 1931

Open on the map4 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. 1927

    July

    The Board of Education proposes a new junior high school on Boston Road

    Public School 98 was proposed to relieve crowding at three of the Bronx's eleven junior high schools, P.S. 30, P.S. 40 and P.S. 61. The city found a site near P.S. 61 on Boston Road, beside Crotona Park's playing fields. It became the first school in New York City whose design did not start from an adapted elementary school plan.

    “The construction of Public School 98 in the Bronx was proposed in July, 1927, to reduce congestion in three of the eleven existing junior high schools…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1929

    The New York Times hails the design as modernism arriving in the schools

    Presenting the plans for P.S. 98 in 1929, the Times declared that modernism had come to school architecture. The classroom wings borrow the projecting piers and vertical window bays of tall office buildings, which Superintendent of School Buildings Walter C. Martin said were drawn from recent skyscrapers. The entrance tower is shaped like a set-back skyscraper, which he likened to Babylonian temples, and the Art Deco ornament uses colored enamel tiles.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1931

    September

    Herman Ridder Junior High School opens for more than 3,000 students

    Built in 1930-31 for $1,800,000, the school had room for 3,090 students. It honors Herman Ridder, a German immigrant who made himself publisher of the Catholic News and later succeeded Oswald Ottendorfer at the German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. Ridder was also respected for his service to education and the community.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1990

    December 11

    The school becomes a city landmark over the Board of Education's objection

    At the September 1987 hearing, three witnesses, the school's principal among them, spoke for designation, while two representatives of the Board of Education's Division of School Buildings opposed it because of alterations they were planning. Those changes had been carried out by the time the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building on December 11, 1990.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 3 buildings with stories in Crotona Park East