Frederick Douglass Academy

2581 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard | also 2589 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, 2589 Adam C Powell Boulevard | Harlem | built 1967

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. 1968

    A school on stilts goes up over the Lenox subway yard as the 148th Street terminal opens

    After the Transit Authority shrank the Lenox Yard from 26 acres to seven in the 1960s, the freed land was sold to a developer. A public school building, now home to Frederick Douglass Academy, and the Esplanade Gardens apartments were built on pilotis over the formerly open-air yard. Two of the yard's tracks were turned into the Harlem-148th Street station, which began service in 1968 as the northern terminus of the 3 train.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1991

    Lorraine Monroe founds Frederick Douglass Academy with a mandatory uniform

    Lorraine Monroe, who had been the city Board of Education's deputy chancellor for instruction, creates Frederick Douglass Academy in 1991 together with several Board of Education colleagues. She serves as founding principal until 1997. The school is among the first high schools in Harlem to require students to wear uniforms, and the city later opens seven more schools with the same name.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 2005

    The school's new robotics team finishes second, ahead of Stuyvesant and Bronx Science

    Students launch a FIRST Robotics Competition team in 2005, and the effort proves remarkable right away. The team takes second place, finishing ahead of both Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science. A year later, students start a school newspaper called The North Star, named for the paper Frederick Douglass published.

    “The inception of the school's FIRST Robotics Competition team in 2005 proved to be remarkable as the team finished in second place…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2011

    July

    Principal Gregory Hodge, who slept on his office sofa, retires after 14 years

    Gregory Hodge leaves after 31 years in city schools, 14 of them leading the academy, where he sometimes slept overnight on his office sofa. The Daily News reports an 85 percent graduation rate last year, up from 68 percent in 2006. Of 196 graduating seniors, all but two are bound for college, including students accepted at Yale and Penn and a homeless boy with cancer whom Hodge mentored.

    Source: nydailynews.com

  5. 2019

    Streamer Kai Cenat graduates from the school

    Kai Cenat, the online streamer and YouTuber, finishes his secondary education at Frederick Douglass Academy in 2019. He then enrolls at SUNY Morrisville to study business administration, but drops out in 2020 because he cannot keep up with both schoolwork and making content.

    “He graduated from high school in 2019 and attended the State University of New York at Morrisville shortly after…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 46 buildings with stories in Harlem