Historic Boerum Hill Public School Building Is Brooklyn’s Latest Landmark

Boerum Hill’s stately Public School 15 Annex building is the borough’s newest individual landmark.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to recognize the 1889 Romanesque Revival school building for what staff said at the meeting was its architectural significance and its role in expanding educational opportunities for women, immigrants, and working-class New Yorkers.

The James Naughton-designed three-story brick building at 372 Schermerhorn Street (formerly 362 Schermerhorn Street) was once called one of the handsomest schools in the city, according to LPC researcher Sarah Eccles. It was first built as an extension of Public School 15, then was taken over by a girls continuation school in the 1920s. In the evenings, it held adult education classes for both women and men and became a place for immigrants to learn English and get vocational training.

The school was affected by the Depression and closed in 1942, Eccles said, when the Department of Education established it as an outpatient clinic for child psychology and used it to integrate mental health services into schools. In the 1990s, it was turned into a business school and, in recent years, the building has housed the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the city’s first public school to have an Arabic and English dual language program.

More recently, the site of Public School 15 and the Annex were included in a controversial rezoning for the new mega-development at 80 Flatbush Avenue by Alloy. As part of the development, which chiefly comprises residential towers, Alloy has built two new public schools in cooperation with the Educational Construction Fund. The developer is also preserving part of Public School 15 in the project and is fully preserving and adaptively reusing the Public School 15 Annex, Eccles told the commissioners.

Eccles said the school is largely intact and small alterations don’t affect the “ornamentation or its significance as an important public school constructed in 1889 to serve the needs of Brooklyn’s growing population,” adding it is a place of “architectural and cultural significance.”

“The Public School 15 Annex reflects an important transitional moment in the work of Superintendent James Naughton, illustrating the evolution of his architectural approach to school design for which he would later become known,” she said. “A place that served multiple functions over its lifetime, that provided education and independence for children, women, and immigrants. The building still reflects its history as a substantial site of opportunity.”

LPC Chair Angie Masters called it “a standout 1889 school building” and said the school was pioneering for the opportunities it provided young women, many of whom were first and second generation Americans. It is “a significant piece of New York City’s public education history,” she added.

Commissioner Stephen Chu said given the surrounding development planned by Alloy, protecting the school was important in retaining some historic fabric in the area. “It’s a great example of the history of social reform and education in New York City. I think it’s a very important building,” he said.

[Photos by Susan De Vries unless noted otherwise]

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