Boys and Girls High School

Boys and Girls High School, the oldest public high school in Brooklyn, is a comprehensive high school in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. The 3,600 student body school is located at 1700 Fulton Street.^[1]

Brooklyn's first public high school, the Central Grammar School (named "Central" rather than "Free" to avoid controversy over providing free "higher education" for poor children), opened, September 1878 in a rented building on Court & Livingston Streets. A new building was planned on the east side of Nostrand Avenue between from Halsey and Macon Streets, designed by Superintendent of Buildings James W. Naughton, but by the time it opened in 1886, enrollment had increased to the point where it was decided to use this building as the girls' high school and to build a separate building for the boys.^[2] The boys remained in the Court Street space. As there were now effectively two schools, in 1891 they were renamed as the Girls' High School and the Boys' High School. A new building for the boys was begun in 1891, on Marcy Avenue, between Madison Street & Putnam Avenue. it opened as Boys High School on November 1, 1892. In 1975 the two schools were merged once again, and shortly afterwards moved into their present building at Fulton Street and Utica Avenue.^[3]

From 1986 until 2004, the school's principal was Frank Mickens, who dealt with the school's many problems during the 1980s, and turned into an excellent college preparatory institution for poor and marginalized young men and women. By 1989 some 70 percent of graduates were enrolled in colleges. Though Mickens methods were attacked on the grounds that he was steering undesirable students to other institutions, his success was hard to question;^[4][5] and there had been no objections during the long years in which both Boys' and Girls' had been in decline, largely due to "steering" good students to other places.

Noted alumni

Shirley Chisholm

• Isaac Asimov (Isaak Yudovich Ozimov), writer^[6]
• Jules Bender, basketball player
• Emanuel Celler, Congressman
• Shirley Chisholm, Congresswoman, presidential candidate
• Ray Copeland, jazz trumpeter
• Aaron Copland, composer
• Tommy Davis, baseball and basketball player^[7]
• Ronnie Dyson, singer
• Inge Hardison, African-American actress and sculptor ^[8]
• Connie Hawkins, basketball player
• John C. Whitehead, Artist / politician
• Rita Hayworth, actress
• Lena Horne, singer, actress
• Edward Everett Horton, actor and comedian
• Duke Jordan, jazz pianist
• Morris Lapidus, architect
• Norman Mailer, author
• Mickey Marcus, attorney and soldier
• Jean Nidetch, businesswoman
• Cecil Payne, jazz saxophonist
• Man Ray, avant-garde artist, photographer
• Dwayne "Pearl" Washington, basketball player
• Randy Weston, jazz pianist
• Irving Thalberg, movie producer
• Lenny Wilkens, basketball player
• Dom Zanni, baseball player^[7]
• Alan King, actor and comedian

Notes

1. Jake Mooney, " Dispatches: A Second Chance for Students Left Behind" New York Times November 28, 2008
2. "19th Century", NYC Department of Education.
3. "Boys High School And Historic Dock Made Landmarks; Boys High And a Dock Are Cited"], Joseph P. Fried, October 5, 1975, New York Times
4. Libby Nelson, New York Times July 10, 2009
5. Neil A. Lewis, "A Tough Principal Turns a School Around" New York Times April 6, 1989
6. Asimov, Isaac (1973). The Early Asimov Volume 1. St. Albans, UK: Panther Books. p. 10. ISBN 058603806X.
7. "Boys and Girls (Brooklyn,NY) Baseball". The Baseball Cube. Retrieved February 14, 2011.
8. New York Times, Apr. 7, 2016, p. A23

External links

• Original building site construction
• New York City Department of Education: Boys and Girls High School
• Profile in New York Times

Coordinates: 40°40′44.4″N 73°55′53.4″W / 40.679000°N 73.931500°W