Old Jamaica High School (Jamaica Learning Center)

88-20 163rd Street | also 162-02 Hillside Avenue | Jamaica | 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. 1896

    Brooklyn architect William B. Tubby gives Jamaica's new P.S. 47 a Dutch Revival face

    The Jamaica Board of Education hired Brooklyn architect William B. Tubby to design P.S. 47, a combined grammar and high school on Hillside Avenue, built in 1895-96 for the still-independent Town of Jamaica. He faced its three stories in red and tan brick, set a large stepped gable with tall stepped windows under a red-brick arch near the west end of the front, and topped the hipped roof with 'witch's hat' dormers.

    “For the design of this building, the Jamaica Board of Education hired renowned Brooklyn architect William B. Tubby.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1899

    November

    Samuel Cisco's widow sues to send her son to P.S. 47 instead of Jamaica's 'Colored School'

    After Jamaica's school board kept Black children in a separate school, Samuel Cisco had been arrested for keeping his son Jacob home in protest and was acquitted by a jury in May 1896. In November 1899 his widow sued the Queens school board so her son could attend the nearest school, P.S. 47. The courts sided with the board, but in March 1900 the State Legislature passed an emergency bill barring any public school from excluding a child because of race or color.

    “In November, 1899 Mrs. Cisco (Samuel Cisco's widow) brought suit against the Board of Education ... to send her son to the nearest school which was P.S. 47.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1909

    Grammar grades leave and the crowded building becomes Jamaica High School

    P.S. 47 opened with grammar classes and 80 high school students, and by 1902 it held 288 pupils. In 1909 the primary grades were moved elsewhere and the building, renamed Jamaica High School, served high school students alone: 826 of them, taught by 36 teachers. By 1922 enrollment in the building had reached 1,775.

    “…in 1909 the primary grades were moved to another location. After that, the school had 826 high school students taught by 36 teachers…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1927

    A larger Jamaica High School opens on Gothic Drive and the old building turns to vocational training

    Overcrowding led to the construction of a much larger Jamaica High School on Gothic Drive in 1927. The Hillside Avenue building then served the Board of Education in other roles: a continuation school, the Jamaica Vocational High School, and a girls' vocational school. By the time of its 2013 landmark report it was an alternative high school, the Jamaica Learning Center.

    “It was the Jamaica Continuation School, the Jamaica Vocational High School and a vocational school for girls. Today it is an alternative high school…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 24 buildings with stories in Jamaica