Public School 9 (P.S. 111)
227 Sterling Place | also 658 Vanderbilt Avenue | Prospect Heights | built 1868
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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.
- 1868
Public School 9 opens with Jane Dunkley as principal, Brooklyn's first woman to lead a large grammar school
Public School 9 officially opened in September 1868 near Grand Army Plaza, a year after construction of the present building began. Jane Dunkley was named its principal, the first woman Brooklyn appointed to lead a large grammar school. The school itself dated to the early 1830s, when it stood in an earlier building on a site later absorbed into Prospect Park.
“When Public School 9 officially opened in September, 1868, Mrs. Jane Dunkley was named as principal. She was the first woman appointed in Brooklyn…”
- 1868
Samuel B. Leonard designs a round-arched Romanesque Revival school at Sterling Place and Vanderbilt Avenue
The central gabled section was designed by Samuel B. Leonard, Superintendent of Buildings for the Brooklyn Board of Education until 1879, and built in 1867-68. James W. Naughton, who held the post after him, made additions to the school in 1887. The Landmarks Preservation Commission called it one of the few schools in the early Romanesque Revival style to survive.
“Public School 9 (111) is one of Leonard's Romanesque Revival designs which, happily, survives.”
- 1895
Enrollment growth requires a Public School 9 annex across the street; the school is later renamed Public School 111
By 1895 so many pupils had enrolled that an annex to Public School 9 had to be built across the street at 251 Sterling Place. Some time afterward the original building was renamed Public School 111. By the 1970s it was no longer a grammar school and served as a special high school.
- 1978
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the school an individual New York City landmark
On January 10, 1978, after a hearing in which three witnesses spoke in favor and none against, the commission designated the school a landmark. It cited the round arches executed in brick and its status as a neighborhood institution in Prospect Heights for 110 years.
“…the Landmarks Preservation Commission designates as a Landmark Public School 111 . 249 Sterling Place, Borough of Brooklyn…”
Further reading
Nearby
- Public School 9 Annex279 Sterling Place | 4 entries
- Montauk Club19 8th Avenue | 7 entries
- Unnameable Books615 Vanderbilt Avenue | 2 entries
- On Prospect Park1 Grand Army Plaza | 1 entry
- Union Temple of Brooklyn17 Eastern Parkway | 6 entries
- Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch20 Grand Army Plaza | 7 entries