Historic Schools of Greenwich Village and the East Village Still Changing Minds

Unsurprisingly, schools in neighborhoods that are over two centuries old have changed a lot over the years. Quite a few of the buildings that serve as schools today are relatively new additions to our neighborhoods, while older school buildings have been repurposed for new uses and lives as their utility for their original purpose may have changed. Today we take a look at three former public schools in our neighborhoods that have evolved into centers for social and cultural change. 

The LGBT Center (formerly P.S. 16), 208 West 13th Street

Constructed in 1863 with additions in 1899, the building that now houses the LGBT Center was once a public school. P.S. 16 opened at 208 West 13th Street (west of 7th Avenue) as a public school for children during a time when the city was creating its first standardized education system for its residents. For the working-class families who lived in the neighborhood at the time, the decision to send their children to school was challenging, as many children worked to support their families. In 1899, the school expanded its hours into the evening so that children who worked would not miss the opportunity to get a grammar school education. It wasn’t until 1938, nearly forty years later, that children were legally protected from inappropriate and unsafe employment, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

During the 1930s, P.S. 16 evolved into the West Side Vocational High School, which would later become the Maritime Trades Vocational High School and merge with another school further uptown. In 1983, the newly formed LGBT Center would move into the former P.S. 16. The Center provides critical social services to New York’s LBGTQ+ community, while also hosting an archive, permanent art collection, and library. They also hold regular lectures and events, as well as social gatherings and concerts for the community.

Performance Space New York (formerly P.S. 122), 150 First Avenue

P.S. 122 was constructed in 1893 at 150 1st Avenue (at 9th Street) under the direction of New York City school superintendent and architect Charles B.J. Snyder. Snyder sought to improve the environmental conditions of schools, particularly access to natural light and outdoor spaces. P.S. 122 was one of his earlier buildings. 

During the financial crisis of the 1970s and with buildings burning and abandoned in the neighborhood, the school closed. Yet a cohort of local artists battling that same financial crisis found an opportunity in the vacant space. They founded Performance Space 122 in 1980, which is now known as Performance Space New York. Performance Space New York continues to provide supportive programming for artists, and hosts a full season of performances that are open to the public. 

CHARAS (formerly P.S. 64), 605 East 9th Street

Although it was locked in a legal battle for over 20 years, former P.S. 64, better known as CHARAS or El Bohío, was one of the most iconic centers of education and social justice in the East Village, and hopefully will be again one day.

The original building located between East 9th and 10th Streets east of Avenue B, was constructed in 1906 by Charles B.J. Snyder, who at that point had implemented his innovative H-shaped schoolhouse design across the city. The schoolhouse was repurposed by the community activist group CHARAS in 1979. Bohío is is a type of hut built by the Indigenous Taino people of Puerto Rico and other islands in the Caribbean. This renaming of the former P.S. 64 symbolized a reclamation of the site by the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican community.

The city did not recognize CHARAS’ occupation of P.S. 64, and auctioned off the building in 1998. The group fought for their right to remain there, but were evicted in 2001. The building remains vacant to this day, but it continues to have many allies. After years of lobbying efforts by many residents and organizations, including Village Preservation, CHARAS did receive landmark designation in 2006.

Here is a an excerpt from the designation report:

 Just as it had served as a center of education and acculturation for European immigrants of the early twentieth century, this building was adapted to the needs of a new generation of immigrants. It was taken over by CHARAS/El Bohío, a group formed in the 1960s to meet the needs of the Latino community. They used the former school for classes, meeting rooms, performances, rehearsal space, art studios and galleries to foster and promote local culture and community. As El Bohío, this building served as an area focal point for the broad-based, citizen’s movement to preserve the buildings and the community of a poor and minority neighborhood despite its deterioration and the city’s fiscal crisis of the late 1970s and 80s. During a period when the Lower East Side was beset by owner disinvestment and abandonment, this building served as a physical and symbolic center of local efforts to restore and invest in the buildings and community of the Lower East Side, or Loisaida neighborhood. 

In late 2023, control and ownership of the building was finally wrested from the owner who’d bought it in 2001, and a new owner is working with community groups including Village Preservation to see it returned to community use.

To learn more about social justice and education in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and Noho, check out our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, as well as our Greenwich Village Historic District Map and East Village Building Blocks.