Part 1: PS 168 – The Fascinating Untold Story About a Former NYC Public School

This is Part 1 of a 3 Part Story.

There’s a building on East 104th Street that I’ve been intrigued by ever since we moved to this neighborhood in East Harlem. Even more intriguing is that there are two other buildings in the neighborhood that look almost identical to the one on our street. The building is so big it’s impossible not to see it every time we leave our apartment. It’s mid-block, on the north side of the street, diagonally across from our building. 

The architectural style of this building stands out in sharp contrast to the rest of the buildings on our block which are mostly late 19th-Century brick tenements. It’s an imposing, 150 foot wide through block stone building that looks like a European castle adorned with steep-pitched roofs, turrets, large windows, elaborate ornamental terracotta details and two central courtyards. A bird’s eye view reveals that the footprint of this building looks like a giant capital “H”.

Over the last five years I’ve walked by it hundreds of times but I suddenly felt compelled to learn the history of this building that’s become a familiar part of my daily life here in New York City. When I set out on this historical adventure I went prospecting for a nugget and wound up discovering a massive vein. It has led me down a winding, twisted path I never could have predicted. Art plays a large role in my life so it’s not surprising that it helped introduce me to some fascinating people and stories along the way.

Ever since I began this new chapter of my life, the Ghosts of Gotham keep revealing themselves to me and I’m really excited to share where they led me this time.

Public School No. 168

My historical adventures typically start by checking out one of the old maps of New York City. I opened up the 1911 Bromley Atlas and right away the building’s easily identifiable capital “H” footprint jumped right off the page. On the Bromley map, the building was labeled: “Public School No. 168”.

After some initial research I discovered that PS 168 was designed by Charles B.J. Snyder, a prolific architect who had an enormous and lasting impact on the five boroughs as New York City’s Superintendent of School Buildings from 1891-1922. Even if you’ve never heard of Snyder you’ve definitely seen one of the 408 school buildings he designed or modified during his long career working for New York City’s Department of Education including DeWitt Clinton High School in Manhattan which is now the location of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Bushwick High School in Brooklyn, Flushing High School in Queens, Evander Childs High School in The Bronx and Curtis High School on Staten Island.

I was super excited to discover the name of the architect who designed the building and learn that it was once a public school. Something else I learned is that when New York City founded the Board of Education in 1843, the “PS” that preceded a school’s assigned number initially stood for “primary school”. For the most part, primary school buildings housed grades 1-5 and grammar school buildings housed grades 6-8. Flushing High School is New York City’s oldest public high school but up until about 1900, most students’ education rarely went beyond the eighth grade.

In preparation for the Consolidation of the Boroughs in 1898, the Board of Education changed the “PS” to mean “public school”. However the change complicated the school building numbering system by creating multiple school buildings with the same number throughout the five boroughs. Armed with this newly discovered knowledge, I went out to examine PS 168 and look for echoes of its past life.

A Closer Look at PS 168

On the south side, which faces East 104th Street, PS 168 has an elevated central courtyard and a central staircase flanked by two large stone columns that lead to an entrance. Above the entrance is a maroon awning with white lettering that reads 325E 104th St. The fenced-in courtyard has been outfitted with several metal picnic tables with benches and playground equipment.

On either side of the courtyard are two sidewalk level arched windows. The window on the west side is covered over from the inside but there is still glass and ironwork on the exterior. The east side window is sealed off and is being used for some type of ventilation.

Looking up at the steeply pitched roofs are 7 elaborate terracotta dormers, a hexagonal turret with a flat roof in the western corner, a square stone cupola with sealed up windows on the eastern side of the building and two small metal cupolas in the center of the roof ridges on the eastern and western sides of the building.

I continued walking east, past the central staircase towards 1st Avenue. Rounding the corner onto East 105th Street on my way to examine the building’s north side, I wondered what year PS 168 was built and how long it served as a public school here in this neighborhood.

Standing on East 105th Street in front of the building, you see that the north side of the building almost mirrors its south side, with a few noticeable differences. Instead of being elevated, the central courtyard is at street level but the entrance to the courtyard is still flanked by two large stone columns. One of them has a stone ball at top and it looks like at one time the other had a matching stone ball that has been removed. I assume the columns on the south side also had stone balls on the top that have been removed.

Inside the paved courtyard are employee parking spaces and several dumpsters. There’s an automatic gate between the two stone columns operated by an attendant somewhere inside the building. Above the north side entrance is a maroon awning with white letterings that reads 325E 105th St. 

Looking up at the steeply pitched roofs on this side are two cylindrical turrets with conical copper roofs in the the eastern and western corners of the building. Like the south side, there are also 7 elaborate terracotta dormers but on this side of the building there are 6 winged headless terracotta grotesques on 4 of the dormers.

Instead of two arched windows on either side of the central courtyard, there are two huge sidewalk level arched entrances. The entrance on the eastern side has metal doors with a pull down security gate and ascending above it are 3 bricked up windows with elaborate stone window frames. The entrance on the west side is completely bricked over but the sidewalk level stairs are still there.

The majority of my interactions with this building have been on 104th Street, so when I approached this sealed entrance I couldn’t believe what I saw. Unless you’re walking with your head looking straight up like I was, you can easily miss the elaborate lintel darkened by the shade of a tall honeylocust tree that reads Public School 168 framed on either side by terracotta ribbons and two funny looking open-mouthed grotesques. The one on the western side has lost its head. After all this time this was the first I’d ever seen this! How could I have missed such an important detail hiding right there in plain sight?

The Architect: Charles B.J. Snyder

After my examination of the old school I set out to find as much information as I could about PS 168. The first place I went digging was with Charles B.J. Snyder, the architect who designed it. Snyder was born in 1860 on the western bank of the Hudson River in the small village of Stillwater, New York and grew up poor in Saratoga Springs which, at the time, was a summer resort community for wealthy New Yorkers. After graduating from Saratoga Springs High School in 1878 he moved to New York City’s Union Square.

Snyder’s time in Union Square was formative. His mother’s cousin, Ellen Louise Curtis, was the founder and operator of a successful womens hat making company located on East Fourteenth Street and her husband, William Jennings Demorest, was a successful publishing magnate. Without a doubt, the Demorest’s support during this time helped lay the foundation for Snyder’s future success.

Living in a rooming house on Thirteenth Street, Snyder worked at his cousin’s offices and apprenticed for a carpenter in Union Square while attending the Cooper Union Free Night School of Science, earning a three-year Certificate of Practical Geometry in 1881 followed by a second three-year Certificate of Elementary Architectural Drawing in 1884 from the Cooper Union School of Art.

C.B.J. Snyder, as he was known professionally, took full advantage of his education and began working as a professional architect in New York City. He created designs for several private homes in New Jersey and New Rochelle as well as a boathouse on the Harlem River for the Lone Star Boat Club and a four story townhouse on East 58th Street in Manhattan that had a bakery on the first floor. However the lion’s share of his work came from commercial alteration projects. From 1882-1891 Snyder filed 35 alteration jobs with the Manhattan Department of Buildings, most of them for Demorest or one of his sons.

Less than 10 years after leaving Saratoga Springs, Snyder’s star was on the rise. He had achieved enough financial success that in 1886 he was able to design and build a house in New Rochelle that was big enough for his mother, sister and grandmother to join him when construction was finished. In 1889 he married artist Harriet Katherine de Vries and they lived in the house that Snyder had built. Two years later on July 8, 1891, when he was just 31 years old, Snyder was elected as New York City’s new Superintendent of School Buildings.

New York City’s Public Schools: A Civic Disgrace

New York City’s public school system was in a bad way when Snyder was elected Superintendent of School Buildings. Up to this point, schools and education were not a priority for the city. Students were packed into old, dilapidated buildings with no heat and unsanitary bathroom conditions. There were often no desks and children either sat together on long wooden backless benches or on damp floors. 

Even during the day most classrooms were so dark they needed to be illuminated by gas lamps that consumed all the oxygen in the room and filled the cramped spaces with toxic coal gas fumes. Pair all of this with the constant noise coming from busy avenues and the newly constructed elevated railroads and it’s no wonder attendance was so low. Critics and social reformers of the day described New York City’s public schools in the last two decades of the 19th Century as soulless factories and prisons.

Industrialization and immigration had profoundly impacted American life by the late 1880s, especially in cities. New York City’s limited number of existing school houses were in desperate need of repair and new schools were badly needed to accommodate the unrelenting waves of immigrant children who arrived to the city every day.

During this time, the city’s public school system was controlled by Tammany Hall and funding was grossly inadequate. Snyder’s immediate predecessor, George W. Debevoise was a quintessential Tammany man, thoroughly corrupt and totally ineffective. The Real Estate Record and Guide described Debevoise’s work as “a civic disgrace”, saying that “warehouses have greater artistic value”.

Photojournalist and progressive social reformer Jacob Riis’ lecture series and subsequent 1890 exposé, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, shined a light on the deplorable living conditions thousands of poor and working class people were experiencing in New York City’s tenements and the public schools were a reflection of these conditions.

As The Progressive Era started taking shape, attitudes began to shift. The building committee finally acknowledged the incompetence and fraud within the public school system. When Debevoise resigned amid allegations of corruption for scheming with contractors to substitute cheaper materials in school construction projects, the Board of Education replaced him with C.B.J. Snyder, someone who would come to embody the ideals of education during The Progressive Era.

New York City’s Public Schools: The Progressive Era

Snyder’s three decades as New York City’s Superintendent of School Buildings was in near perfect alignment with The Progressive Era in the United States. After logging his 10,000 hours, C.B.J found himself in the exact right place at the exact right time.

“Progressives were confident that social and organizational solutions would correct the disturbing conditions of society and that schools were central to the notions of progress and human betterment. Snyder was bolstered by and then in turn promoted the social activism of the Progressive Era…His efforts were part of the widespread initiatives intended to ameliorate the difficult life of the disadvantaged – for instance, settlement houses, public health reforms, public baths, public parks, and libraries. The public schools seemed to be the lynchpin of these attempts to improve society…Snyder’s mission was part of this groundswell of reform efforts, in New York and in the country as a whole – a response to the desperate poverty spawned by industrialization and massive immigration”.

– From Factories to Palaces: Architect Charles B.J. Snyder and the New York City Public Schools, Jean Arrington, 2022, pp. 34-35

Progressive ideology about education influenced new curricula and teaching techniques. Rote memorization and conformity was being replaced by an emphasis on fostering critical thinking and the acknowledgement of students’ unique capabilities. Teaching students hands-on skills in science and technology that could be used in the real world as well as music, art and physical education were all important tenets of Progressive Era education. As a result, public schools needed to be modified and constructed to accommodate this new movement.

School building design became a prestigious architectural specialty during the Progressive Era. Two years after Snyder took the job, the City Beautiful Movement introduced the progressive idea that beautiful architecture would help to redeem society and when the 1898 Consolidation of the Boroughs made New York City the second largest city in the world, a period of enormous construction kicked into high gear.

“After the 1898 Consolidation of the Boroughs had catapulted New York overnight into the position of second-largest city in the world, the city wanted to look the part. It chose distinguished architects to design its police precinct houses, fire stations, Carnegie libraries, public bathhouses – and public schools. New York was making itself over in the image of great European cities with imposing civic and cultural institutions. In these years around the turn of the twentieth century many of the city’s iconic buildings arose: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Customs House, the Forty-Second Street Library, Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station”

– From Factories to Palaces: Architect Charles B.J. Snyder and the New York City Public Schools, Jean Arrington, 2022, p. 41

C.B.J. Snyder’s Public Schools

With a clear vision for what needed to be done to improve the conditions of New York City’s public schools, Snyder confidently took the helm as the new Superintendent of School Buildings during one of New York City’s most prolific building phases. During his first year on the job, Snyder was quoted in the New York Tribune as saying: “we seek to make the school building itself quite as much a factor in education as the textbooks”. 

Yet despite his clear purpose and optimism, C.B.J. still faced many challenges during the first decade of his tenure. Snyder had inherited a collection of old outdated school houses in various stages of disrepair after decades of neglect and underfunding. The Panic of 1893 sparked one of the United States’ worst economic depressions in history so persuading city leaders to increase funding for the repair and construction of public school buildings was a constant challenge. 

To add insult to injury, in April 1894 ex-school board commissioner Charles C. Wehrum released a very detailed and scathing report about the terrible conditions of New York City’s public schools. When the report was released, Snyder had already remedied most of the problems Wehrum highlighted, but his report still created a huge public backlash.

Fortunately, Snyder had a number of progressive allies within the Board of Education including J.J. Little who hired him and Robert Maclay, Building Committee chairman and School Board President. Maclay played such an influential role in Snyder’s life that Snyder named his younger son Robert Maclay Snyder after his close colleague. 

However it could be argued that Snyder wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all that he did were it not for his partnership with William Maxwell, the progressive first Superintendent of Schools for the newly consolidated Greater New York. As the late Snyder biographer Jean Arrington put it, “Maxwell was the pedagogical architect and Snyder the literal one”.

With the support of his progressive allies, Snyder worked tirelessly to repair and replace New York City’s public school buildings. He designed enormous palaces of education that represented the epitome of Progressive Era educational ideals. His designs incorporated modern building techniques including steel-frame construction which allowed for bigger structures and large windows to let in more natural light and air. 

He fireproofed every building and his designs incorporated the latest in forced-air heating and ventilation systems, some of which he invented himself. His public schools were some of the first in the nation to include libraries, auditoriums, science laboratories, manual training spaces, demonstration kitchens, open-air classrooms, art studios, music conservatories, indoor gymnasiums with swimming pools and rooftop playgrounds.

The bones and interiors of Snyders’s public school designs may have been modern, but their exterior appearances represented a wide variety of classical architectural styles including Italian Palazzo, Dutch and Flemish Renaissance, French Chateau, Baroque, Collegiate Gothic and Georgian. According to Arrignton, the terms most commonly used to describe Snyder’s style as an architect are historicist, eclectic and Beaux Arts.

“…Snyder was not a purist; he didn’t hesitate to use characteristics of various historical styles on a single building, hence the term ‘eclectic’…whatever the historicist style or eclectic combination of styles, he approached the buildings of his first decade from the ‘Beaux Arts’ perspective. Incorporating the principles taught at the popular nineteenth-century École des Beaux Arts in Paris, his schools had the monumentality of symmetrical façades, prominent entranceways, and lavish ornamentation and roof features”.

– From Factories to Palaces: Architect Charles B.J. Snyder and the New York City Public Schools, Jean Arrington, 2022, p. 41

New York City’s Public Schools Were Designed to Strengthen Communities

The vast majority of the students who attended public school in New York City during the Progressive Era were immigrants and first generation Americans from poor and working class families. Influenced by progressive ideology as well as his own experiences growing up poor, the appearance of Snyder’s public schools were purposefully designed to instill a sense of pride, worthiness and belonging in the thousands of children who attended them.

“The façades suggested other positive aspects of education – namely, the idea that schools offered balance, enlightenment and refuge. The symmetry of the buildings said that education, with its ordered, planned curriculum wasn’t random or chaotic but brought balance to one’s life. The huge windows said that education was enlightening. The façades, in general, conveyed the idea that school was healthy and expansive rather than depressing, freeing rather than imprisoning, inviting rather than forbidding  – a place where a student would want to be…Further, by dominating the streetscape the grandiose buildings proclaimed the worthiness of students and education. They said to students who entered, ‘You matter, and your education matters’”.

– From Factories to Palaces: Architect Charles B.J. Snyder and the New York City Public Schools, Jean Arrington, 2022, p. 66

Snyder’s schools were designed to be anchors in the community not just for the children who attended classes during the day but for the millions of poor and working class families who lived in the neighborhoods where his schools were being built. Schools were built to help strengthen the communities in which they were located. Adults could attend public lectures held in the school’s auditoriums, they could learn English and gain valuable vocational skills through evening classes being taught in the hands-on classrooms and workshop spaces.

Education was the foundation upon which social reformers and Progressives built their movement and New York City’s public school buildings were the shining example of what they hoped would transform American society for the better.

In describing the impact of Snyder’s school designs on New York City’s immigrant communities, the late architectural detective, social historian and former New York Times Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray wrote that they were “created to bring not simply instruction but also an uplifting cultural influence to New York City’s poor and working class sections”, standing out “like beacons of gentility in their tenement neighborhoods”.

Snyder’s “H” Schools

In 1898, the same year the five boroughs were consolidated to make the City of Greater New York, Snyder introduced an entirely new public school building design that would become known as the “H” School that he described as “a radical departure from the established order of things”. Snyder’s “H” Schools were designed to be built in the middle of a Manhattan city block and extend through the entire block from street to street. 

Two large parallel structures were built on either side of a building lot and connected by one large perpendicular central structure. The resulting shape looked like a capital “H” with the negative spaces forming two central courtyards. Large windows were built facing these courtyards allowing for significantly more natural light for classrooms and increased ventilation. The centralized courtyards were fenced in for safe outdoor recreation as well as outdoor classroom space.

Snyder’s new school building design was inspired by a medieval building he saw in Paris. Two years before introducing his new design, Snyder’s close colleague and New York City School Board President Robert Maclay sent him on a fact finding mission to London and Paris to study the architecture in these cities. While he was in Paris, Snyder was particularly impressed by a late 15th Century building a few blocks south of Notre Dame called Hôtel de Cluny, today known as The Musée de Cluny, which featured a wide central courtyard that faced the street, steeply-pitched roofs and elaborate stone dormers.

In 1904, C.B.J. described the reason for the mid-block placement of his “H” School buildings:

“In 1896, while considering plans for a new school building in an uptown district, it occurred to me that the erection of school buildings on avenue corners was unwise, not only on account of the cost, but also of the incessant noise of the up and down town traffic, it being practically impossible to obtain an avenue corner free from the noise and nuisance of passing trolley cars. I therefore designed what has become known as the “H” school building, to be erected upon a plot in the middle of the block away from the avenues, extending through from street to street, the side walls on the party lines being entirely blank, the only break being a recess in the center of the line of the plot, with stairways placed at this point. The light and air of the school building was taken almost wholly from a central court…where the adjacent houses are built hard up to the school house walls”.

– From Proceedings of the Municipal Engineers of the City Of New York, Edited by The Publication and Library Committee WH Roberts Editor and Business Manager, 1904, p. 57

Snyder’s first “H” School was PS 147, a Romanesque Revival built in 1899 on the Lower East Side between Henry Street and East Broadway near the newly built Henry Street Settlement House.

Social reformer Jacob Riis loved his friend’s new “H” School buildings saying, “I cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school”. Over the course of his long career as New York City’s Superintendent of School Buildings, C.B.J. built 53 “H” Schools including PS 168 on East 104th Street across the street from our apartment in East Harlem.

Time to Go Fishing

After 31 years designing school buildings for the City of New York, Snyder was ready to retire. He began his career at the start of the Progressive Era, working ceaselessly through the ups and downs of economic depressions, a World War and the push for standardization in school building design as well as periodic criticism from both citizens and city leaders.

Leadership in the Board of Education and the city itself had changed significantly since Snyder’s early days working alongside William Maxwell. In 1922, John Francis Hylan was elected to a second term as Mayor of New York City on the campaign slogan “A Seat for Every Child”. Mayor Hylan pressured Snyder to speed up the process of building schools to achieve his agenda but Snyder refused to choose speed over quality. So in May of that year, Snyder announced his retirement:

“Since 1904, which is a long time, I have had no vacation. Now I have cleaned up the best part of the work that I have on hand. It is doubtful, if I should remain, whether I would get any vacation this year. I am tired and completely worn out. I think it is time for me to go fishing. I have been asked to take the position of consulting architect in the department and have the executive work done by some other person. I am now thinking this matter over. I have the best of feelings toward all the members of the Board of Education, and my asking to be retired has nothing to do with any friction between me and any of them”.

– New York Times, Charles B.J. Snyder, May 4 1922, p. 18

A few days after announcing his retirement and no doubt feeling a bit reflective, Snyder stated in a New York Times article that his “H” School design was “the most important of his innovations”. He officially retired on January 1, 1923. Almost immediately after, he and his wife Harriet took their two six year old granddaughters on a four month long vacation to Florida to go fishing and enjoy some hard earned relaxation. Four years later, Harriet passed away and Snyder went to live with his son Howard in Garden City, Long Island.

Snyder’s Impact

For a period of time Snyder consulted for the New York City Board of Education on several school designs as well as a few designs outside the realm of education but for the most part he did his best to stay retired. He spent a lot of time at the family’s summer cottage in Babylon, New York where he had a small boat docked out back. He went fishing, spent time with his grandchildren and, every so often, took the train into the city to show them some of the schools he designed. Tragedy struck on November 14, 1945 when Snyder and his son Robert died by asphyxiation from an overnight gas leak at their cottage in Babylon. He had just turned 85.

Public school building design in New York City and the United States was greatly influenced by Charles B.J. Snyder. Many of the things we take for granted today were first implemented in Snyder’s schools. For many years after his retirement and tragic passing, school building architects continued borrowing from and in some cases flat out copying C.B.J. ‘s designs, including his “H” School buildings.

Part 2 of PS 168: The Fascinating Untold Story About a Former NYC Public School will be published soon. Subscribe to Ghosts of Gotham to get Parts 2 and 3 delivered to your inbox as soon as they’re published.