Building of the Day: 1700 Fulton Street

(Back of school, from Atlantic Ave. Photo: Googlemaps)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Boys and Girls High School
Address: 1700 Fulton Street
Cross Streets: Schenectady and Utica Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1975
Architectural Style: Modern
Architect: John Louis Wilson, Jr.
Other buildings by architect: 77 New York Ave, Crown Heights, part of team: Harlem River Houses, NYC. Kerbs Memorial Boathouse, Central Park at E. 73rd St.
Landmarked: No

The story: Secondary public education, known as “high school”, is a relatively new phenomenon in American education, and the first one was in Brooklyn, in 1878; the Central Grammar School, on Court and Livingston Street, in Downtown Brooklyn. By 1886, the city of Brooklyn had opened a new and much larger high school, which became Girls High School, on Nostrand Avenue, between Macon and Halsey, in Bedford. That was soon followed by a Boys High School, on nearby Marcy Avenue, between Putnam and Madison. Both were designed by James Naughton, and both today are landmarked buildings. They both educated thousands of students until the 1970’s, at which time education had changed.

Someone got the idea that separate boys and girls schools were not conducive to modern education, and both schools were also quite crowded. Bedford Stuyvesant was undergoing some of its worst social upheavals, and education was failing its students. It was decided to build a new Boys and Girls High School. The architect they chose was John Louis Wilson, Jr., the venerable dean of New York’s African-American architects.

Louis was born in 1899, in Mississippi. From those humble origins, he ended up being the first black architect to graduate from Columbia University, in 1928. His first job as an architect was with the NYC Department of Transportation. He eventually left and opened his own practice. His office on 125th Street was a meeting place for his mentorship of hundreds of aspiring and beginning black, Latino, and foreign-born architects who looked to him for inspiration and help.

For most of his very long career, Wilson would design modest apartment buildings, public schools, senior centers and public works projects. His most famous project was as part of the design team for the Harlem River Houses, NYC’s first federally funded housing project, under FDR’s New Deal, in 1936. During the 1950’s and 60’s, while still keeping his private practice, Wilson was a consulting architect for the Parks Department, at which time he designed the Alice and Edward Kerbs Memorial Boathouse in Central Park, at East 73rd Street.

Boys and Girls High School comes towards the end of Wilson’s long career. It, along with the senior citizen high rise called Stuy Park House, a BOTD a couple of years ago, represent his final Brooklyn works. The High School is a better building, a very large complex stretching a full block between Utica and Schenectady Avenues. He uses a lot of cantilevered levels, especially in the back of the building, and while not the masterpiece of Boys High, it’s a good modern school. The site makes fine use of the space behind it for its athletics dept., with a running track and playing fields. Many city schools would kill for this amount of space.

Wilson was showered with honors for his work promoting blacks and minorities into the architectural professions, and many of today’s architects benefited from his wisdom and care, whether it was personal or passed down; architects of all races and persuasions. He died at the age of 91, in 1989.GMAP