The Man Who Built New York City's Schools
November 3, 2014 12:20 PM   Subscribe

In an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx lies the five-foot-seven-inch body of a man responsible for bringing untold amounts of sunshine to New York City’s youth. During his eighteen-year tenure as Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education, Snyder built public schools with windows that made up nearly sixty percent of the buildings’ facades, much of the remaining space covered in lavish ornamentation. “There is not a dark corner in the whole structure,” social reformer Jacob Riis wrote of Snyder’s design in his seminal 1902 text "The Battle With the Slum." “Literally, he found barracks where he is leaving palaces to the people...I cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school.”
posted by ellieBOA (14 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Bosh! Flimshaw! Light uplifts the spirit of these potentially seditious urchins, who might as a result seek to improve their lot in life or *shudder* dare to question their betters! 'Tis better, truly, if their surroundings oppress and deflate rather than inspire."

- the architect who designed my high school, probably
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:51 PM on November 3, 2014 [5 favorites]


Great piece; thanks for posting.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:54 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


It sounds like Charles B.J. Snyder tried to build schools that weren't inhuman places that make human monsters. These days we don't seem to care if our schools look like they belong behind a penitentiary wall.
posted by starbreaker at 1:00 PM on November 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


I went to school in a very fine building. I did, and do, appreciate it. But believe you me, there was as much savagery there as anywhere.
posted by No Robots at 1:04 PM on November 3, 2014


I'm going to argue that there's more to making human monsters than bad architecture.
posted by IndigoJones at 1:12 PM on November 3, 2014


These days we don't seem to care if our schools look like they belong behind a penitentiary wall.

Indeed, sometimes they are indistinguishable.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:13 PM on November 3, 2014


I went to a high school that was designed like a community college with an octagonal center building (the library was in the center, you see cause its the center of knowledge)and spokes for each "discipline" (science, language, history), and lots of all-glass interior walls and a "new building" with a pool and big bay windows and skylights. There was even an outdoor "amphitheater". everything was done up in 70s brick, yellow and orange. There was carpeting everywhere but the science labs (yes even in the center "cafteria-event-dance space" called The Commons for some reason.

Not to romanticizing high school too much, but it was the only high school I knew of that had a well stoked comic book AND occult section. I saw it again a few years ago and a huge, colorless modern expansion had basically consumed the original floor-plan like a toxic mold. Sad really.
posted by The Whelk at 1:25 PM on November 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


Looking back, I realize that I went to

- an elementary school that had twenty foot tall windows taking up one side of each room,
- a junior high where rooms had a single line of foot-tall windows running along the top of one wall,
- and a high school that had no windows or other opening to the outside in any of the classrooms.

This was in Southern California, so there's no excuse of saving money on heating. It really seemed to say "You want natural light? Don't be a baby."
posted by benito.strauss at 1:34 PM on November 3, 2014


Speaking of penitentiary walls and Southern California: a decade ago, when a friend of mine was visiting NYC from California for the first time, she said that she was astonished by the sheer number of jails scattered throughout the city.

A few questions later, and it turned out that the "jails" were actually public schools. Including my own, Snyder-designed alma mater.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:38 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Whelk: maybe it is the jail talk, but my first reading of your description sounds like a Panopticon.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:56 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


A surprisingly pleasant one!
posted by The Whelk at 2:31 PM on November 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


I went to a high school that was designed like a community college with an octagonal center building (the library was in the center, you see cause its the center of knowledge)and spokes for each "discipline" (science, language, history), and lots of all-glass interior walls and a "new building" with a pool and big bay windows and skylights.

The middle school near me (not the one I attended) appears to have started out along that same model.
But over the years, they have slowly introduced fences and gates, closed corridors, and painted coloured lines on the walls (to mark where you are allowed to be).

So, if you look close, you can see the bones of the 70s "open campus" but it is all overlaid with modern paranoia.
posted by madajb at 5:14 PM on November 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


So, if you look close, you can see the bones of the 70s "open campus" but it is all overlaid with modern paranoia.

Um, was this like Open Classroom design? Sounds like a terrible concept.
posted by ovvl at 7:04 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


In Victoria (Australia), after the Education Act 1872 was passed, with free and compulsory primary school education for all children, the State had a dearth of schools. The Education Department’s chief architect, Henry Bastow, managed to build 615 schools in just five years, using templates that were adapted to local circumstances and that provided excellent robust and distinctive buildings that are still present in many of the older suburbs and country towns across the State.

Often more recently they've been converted into admin blocks and the like, as they're not quite meeting the classroom challenges of the 21st century. Still, a fascinating story.
posted by wilful at 5:13 AM on November 4, 2014


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