The Sixth Street School

630 East 6th Street | East Village | built 1900

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. 1888

    Emily Thorn Vanderbilt Sloane White funds the Sixth Street School

    Emily Thorn Vanderbilt Sloane, wife of William Douglas Sloane, gives the Children's Aid Society a school building on East 6th Street, designed by Vaux & Radford in a mix of Victorian Gothic and Flemish Revival styles. She also pays its upkeep, sending the Society a check for $3,000 each year, a sum that rises to $3,450 by 1900. She hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for the pupils too, some 350 of whom attend in 1897.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1908

    The school starts training boys as telephone and messenger operators

    A new class at the Sixth Street School trains aspiring office boys, who copy letters, tie bundles and study the city's geography so they can run messages quickly. Pupils who master the streets are promised time on a telephone switchboard. Like other Children's Aid Society schools in tenement neighborhoods, the school leans toward trades and domestic skills rather than purely academic study.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1932

    The school building becomes Cheer Lodge, a shelter for homeless men

    The Salvation Army and the YMCA convert the former school into a men's shelter called Cheer Lodge, which opens on March 1, 1932 and houses 50 to 100 homeless and jobless men. In 1936 it turns into a shelter for women and children, which closes in June 1943. The building then returns to the Children's Aid Society as the Sloane Center, hosting its Boys and Girls Clubs.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1999

    Harden & Van Arnam convert the school into housing for people with AIDS

    Architects Harden & Van Arnam renovate the former Sixth Street School into 40 apartments for people with AIDS, work that begins in August 1999. They restore the Vaux & Radford facade and add a six-story tower in 2000. The New York Landmarks Conservancy gives the project a Lucy G. Moses Award in 2001.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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