Who builds a school without windows?
I've seen this building many times as I biked home to the Bronx through Harlem or from the window of a Metro North train. It has always made me wonder: "why doesn't that building have any windows?" Closer inspection revealed that the building was, in fact, a school. A school! With no windows, who would build such a thing?
I finally decided to track down the history of the building. It was erected in 1965, at the time, there was a great deal of racial tension in the country much of it related to school integration. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ended segregation in schools by law but de facto segregation was as strong as ever. In New York City black parents groups in Harlem demanded that the schools be integrated. The people in Queens did not want this to happen in part because they worried that their kids would be treated like black kids if they were educated with black kinds and the black schools provided an inferior education, and also because many were simply racist and scared of integration.
In response to this the city decided to build a new high school in Harlem. It was intended to be a "magnet" school and draw kids from all over the city. So, although students from the majority black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, like Harlem, would still be barred from going to schools in other parts of the city, perhaps integration could happen by attracting white students to a school in Harlem. The city spent 5 million dollars building the school, which in the 1960s was quite a sum for just one school. They claimed it would be modern, like no other school! And it would have air conditioning!
New York City Board of Education.
The result was a monstrous building with no windows. A building so bizarre and intimidating only those from the immediate area ever ended up using it. It was integrated in the sense that half of the students were Puerto Rican, but all of the students were poor, and the architecture was terrible. It also failed to attract any white students despite a half-hearted advertising campaign by the board of education. To the parents in Harlem who supported integration initially this seemed to be almost by design. So, they gave up on the idea of integration and asked instead for more black teachers and a black principal so that the school could be better connected to to the community. At the same time they challenged the ideas embedded in the architectural design of the school. Like me, they wanted to know why the school had no windows, why did it look like a prison? Why did it cost so much but fail to connect with the surrounding community so spectacularly?
"the city's finest, an architectural gem"
In 1966 the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded to the architectural firm of Curtis and Davis first prize in the annual New York City School Awards Program, for the "design excellence of I.S. 201." The mainstream press at the time, TIME magazine and the Daily News, cast the parents as radicals who could not be satisfied. TIME magazine described the I.S. 201 building as "the city's finest, an architectural gem and potentially an academic joy," but time would prove the parents right. The building was described by Robert A. M. Stern, an architectural historian, as a part of the transformation of design in public schools in to "fortified refuges from a decaying city" and he thought that no other building was more hostile in its impact than I.S. 201.
the few windows it has are recessed deep under the building and covered with metal cages
So what were the designers of I.S. 201 thinking? One reason they chose to have no windows was due to the noise from the metro north trains that ran by the building. This seems to make a lot of sense, but it fails to explain why the building has no windows on all sides. The architects regarded the surrounding neighborhood as hostile and a negative influence on the students so they blocked of windows on all sides to isolate students from what they perceived to be a harmful environment. The school is not just sound-proof and sight-proof but the few windows it has are recessed deep under the building and covered with metal cages giving the school the look and feeling of a prison or fortress. None of the classrooms have windows "to heighten the students concentration." Another reason why the school was designed without windows is to prevent vandals from breaking the windows. ( One might extend this brilliant philosophy and simply not have a school at all to prevent students from getting bad grades in it. )
So what has happened to the building today? It seems a shame to let a 5 million dollar investment, even a horribly misguided one, go to waste. The school is currently occupied by a small magnet school with a focus on music (formerly the Boys Choir of Harlem). The space is not, and never will be, ideal but at least it's being put to use.