82. Fourteenth Ward Industrial School
A.K.A.: Astor Memorial School; Mott Street Industrial School
Location: 256-258 Mott Street, between East Houston and Prince Streets
Built: 1888-89; restored 2004
Architects: Vaux & Radford
National Register Number: 83001724
Listed: January 27, 1983
Visited: October 12, 2008
A is for Astor--John Jacob Astor III, who paid for the building and the property it stood on to honor his late wife. The school was one of many built for the Children's Aid Society, a charitable organization founded in 1853; this location served a local Italian-American community whose last vestiges in Nolita up and died decades ago. The National Register of Historic Places nomination form says the Children's Aid Society was founded to benefit the lives of the city's homeless children "through the establishment of lodging houses, reading rooms, and industrial schools." In a bit of what is perhaps a misplaced focus, the form gives somewhat more detail about the building's architectural rather than civic virtues, Queen Anne style this and stepped gable that. In her book Alone in the World: Orphans and Orphanages, Catherine Reef is a bit blunter with the details as to what exactly TCAS did. For example: "The volunteer teachers were mainly were mainly well-to-do women who paid particular attention to the girls, hoping to prevent them from becoming prostitutes." Oh. Another fact: between 1854 and 1929, TCAS shipped over 100,000 indigent children from New York City to the Midwest where they'd find new families, something like indentured servitude, or a little of both. My god.
TCAS is still around. New Yorkers of a certain age (and economic strata, I suppose) best know it as the source of an insistent television jingle that goes "I'm really glad they made/The Children's Aid/Society." No YouTube evidence of it exists, it seems; you'll have to take my word for it.
Location: 256-258 Mott Street, between East Houston and Prince Streets
Built: 1888-89; restored 2004
Architects: Vaux & Radford
National Register Number: 83001724
Listed: January 27, 1983
Visited: October 12, 2008
A is for Astor--John Jacob Astor III, who paid for the building and the property it stood on to honor his late wife. The school was one of many built for the Children's Aid Society, a charitable organization founded in 1853; this location served a local Italian-American community whose last vestiges in Nolita up and died decades ago. The National Register of Historic Places nomination form says the Children's Aid Society was founded to benefit the lives of the city's homeless children "through the establishment of lodging houses, reading rooms, and industrial schools." In a bit of what is perhaps a misplaced focus, the form gives somewhat more detail about the building's architectural rather than civic virtues, Queen Anne style this and stepped gable that. In her book Alone in the World: Orphans and Orphanages, Catherine Reef is a bit blunter with the details as to what exactly TCAS did. For example: "The volunteer teachers were mainly were mainly well-to-do women who paid particular attention to the girls, hoping to prevent them from becoming prostitutes." Oh. Another fact: between 1854 and 1929, TCAS shipped over 100,000 indigent children from New York City to the Midwest where they'd find new families, something like indentured servitude, or a little of both. My god.
TCAS is still around. New Yorkers of a certain age (and economic strata, I suppose) best know it as the source of an insistent television jingle that goes "I'm really glad they made/The Children's Aid/Society." No YouTube evidence of it exists, it seems; you'll have to take my word for it.
Labels: Calvert Vaux, Little Italy, Nolita, school, Vaux and Radford
posted by Michael at
11:28 PM
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