Image via Complex Original
Founded in 1902, the Manhattan Trade School for Girls (127 East 22nd Street) was established to train young women to work in the garment industry. Students entered the program between the ages of 14-17, and were trained for approximately 11 months. Classes lasted seven hours per day, with five specifically dedicated to trade skills; one-and-a-half to subjects such as English, arithmetic, and design; and 30 minutes on hygiene and gymnastics. This film shows the typical day at the school including the auxiliary classes.
Exterior
The school was the brainchild of several prominent NYC reformers who identified a need to provide a better skill set to the city’s growing immigrant population. By today’s standards, these jobs would be called dead-end positions, but at the time, with most women leaving the work force after a couple of years to pursue a completely domestic life, these proved to be temporarily useful. The city almost immediately recognized the value of this program and incorporated it into the school system as one of four vocational schools, and the only one that admitted female students. Within a couple of years, enrollment to this free program was so great that a new facility was needed.
The Designer
C.B.J. Snyder, the Superintendent of School Buildings and the architect responsible for many of the important school buildings tasked himself for this design. Designed in 1915, the school was relocated to 127 East 22nd Street from the old Union Square address. Unique to this school was the different class room environment necessary for a trade school.
Snyder's design takes on a Collegiate Gothic style similar to schools of that era, but in this case applying it to a loft-like structure similar to the garment factories that the graduates would work in. At the time, it was the tallest school building in the city.
The base
The base was made of limestone and was originally intended for sales rooms and a restaurant.
Upper levels
The upper levels use a repeating terra cotta pattern.
Gnomes
At the capitols of the surface columns are strange gnome-like figures with exaggerated expressions intended to indicate learning. The Gothic lettering on the side street between the entrances still remains, though the building now houses the “School of the Future,” a humanities-based institution with a focus on independent learning through internships. The façade also bears the shields of the Board of Education.