Samuel Gompers Industrial High School

462 Wales Avenue | also 455 Southern Boulevard | Port Morris | built 1931

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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. 1929

    The planned Bronx Vocational High School is renamed for labor leader Samuel Gompers

    First planned as Bronx Vocational High School, the school was renamed in 1929 for Samuel Gompers, who led the American Federation of Labor longer than anyone and was its first president; he had died in December 1924. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls him a fitting namesake for a trade school. Even The Age, an Australian paper, welcomed the renaming as a way that democracy builds monuments.

    “The school was named for labor leader Samuel Gompers in 1929.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1930

    May

    Walter C. Martin reworks the school's design with Art Deco ornament and reliefs

    William H. Gompert drew the original Medieval Revival design in 1924-25; his successor as the Board of Education's school architect, Walter C. Martin, revised it, and the Art Commission approved the changes in May 1930. Martin swapped red brick for shades of brown and added Art Deco ornament. The two towers on Southern Boulevard carry quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin, flanked by terracotta panels of trades such as Wiring, Aviation and Forge.

    “Gompert's design was modified by Walter C. Martin, who added Art Deco ornament and sculptural reliefs that identify the school and its purpose.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1935

    September 4

    Samuel Gompers Industrial High School opens to train electricians, with the city's first neon-light course

    Finished in 1932 but held up for years by the wait for furniture and shop equipment, the school opened on September 4, 1935, built around the study of electricity. The New York Herald Tribune said no other new city school building was ready for students that term. The New York Times reported a course on neon lights, a first for any New York school, in which boys took apart Times Square-style signs and rebuilt them.

    “Samuel Gompers Industrial High School opened on September 4, 1935.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1938

    June

    Gompers's widow attends the school's first commencement of 117 student electricians

    The first graduating class, 117 boys, received diplomas in June 1938. Gertrude Greaves Gompers, widow of the labor leader the school is named for, was there. Most graduates were white; The New York Age noted one Black student, Joseph Wilson of Brooklyn, who had studied mechanics and welding. The early classes were drawn mainly from the Bronx, then Upper Manhattan, plus a handful of Queens students.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 2012

    Samuel Gompers closes and the building becomes a campus for three high schools

    The school, known to many as Samuel Gompers Vocational and Technical High School, shut down in 2012. By then it had seen its first Black principal, Cecil A. Benjamin, in the early 1970s, and admitted girls from the early 1980s, though the students were still 83 percent male in 2001. Three schools now share the building: Mott Haven Community High School, New Visions Charter High School II, and Health Education & Research Occupations High School.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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