New York City Mayor
Fiorello H. LaGuardia started the high school in 1936, an event he described as "the most hopeful accomplishment" of his administration.[1] As the mayor of New York City he wanted to establish a public school in which students could hone their talents in music, art and the performing arts. Music & Art was made up of three departments: Art, Instrumental Music, and Vocal Music. It was a
magnet school, meant to draw talented students from all boroughs. In 1948, a sister school – the
High School of Performing Arts – was created in an effort to harness students' talents in dance.
As per Mayor LaGuardia's vision, Music & Art and Performing Arts merged on paper in 1961[12] and were to be combined in one building. However, this took many years and it was not until 1984 that the sister schools were merged into a new school, the
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, at a new building designed by
Eduardo Catalano in the
Lincoln Square area of Manhattan. The
Board of Education posthumously honored Mayor LaGuardia by naming the new building after him.
Architectural significance
The 1924
gothic revival building was designed by
William H. Gompert, Architect & Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education, to house the New York Training School for Teachers. The Training School became the New York Teachers Training College from 1931 to 1933. That school was abolished during
the Depression when there was a surplus of teachers for the city's school system, and Mayor LaGuardia used the opportunity to create the High School of Music & Art.
Architecturally, the building blends in with the older gothic revival buildings of the City College campus, designed by architect
George B. Post around 1900 to create a setting that came to be known as "the poor man's
Harvard."
Music & Art students and graduates often referred to the building as "The Castle on the hill," a reference to the design of its gothic towers, and the decorative
gargoyles done in a quirky and playful style that the Landmarks Commission report describes as "finials in the shape of creatures bearing shields." The tower rooms have dramatic acoustics, which Music & Art used as choral practice rooms. The large gymnasium features large
Tudor-arch-shaped windows on two sides that at certain times during the day stream sunlight into the room. The auditorium has excellent acoustics, and features diamond-shaped amber windows that during daylight cast a warm glow on its dark wood interior. The iron ends of the auditorium seats have a casting with an image of the Tudor window arches in the gymnasium.
The building won status as a landmark by the
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1997.[13] According to the Landmark Commission report, this was not an expensive building for its time, and many of the structural components (like the staircase bracings in the stairwell) were left exposed to save money. Yet much thought went into humanizing the space and creating a good environment for learning, with plenty of natural light and air, expansive collaborative spaces, and much playful decoration thrown in for good measure:
The five- and six-story (plus basement and central tower) L-shaped [building] was designed in an abstracted contemporary
Collegiate Gothic style and clad in limestone and mottled buff-to brown iron-spot brick, with large window bays filled with unusual folding-casement steel sash windows. Exterior articulation, divided vertically by pavilions, buttresses, and square towers, also differentiated the model school and training school portions, as well as a "churchlike" wing housing an auditorium, above which is a gymnasium.
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's
verifiability policy. Please
improve this article by removing names that do not have independent
reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate
citations.(April 2024)
Allen Swift (1924–2010), actor, writer and magician, best known as a voiceover artist who voiced characters
Simon Bar Sinister and Riff-Raff on the
Underdog cartoon show[27]
^
abEsposito, Mike, in Stroud, Bryan D. (2008).
"Mike Esposito interview (part 1)". The Silver Age Sage. Archived from
the original on September 1, 2012. Retrieved February 13, 2009. I went to the High School of Music & Art ... in HarlemAdditional, June 16, 2012.
^Bolle, Frank.
"Frank Bolle".
National Cartoonists Society.
Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved June 28, 2015. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. June 23, 1924 and started drawing on any scrap of paper I could find.
^Grimes, William.
"", The New York Times, April 27, 2010. Accessed December 28, 2023. "Upon graduating from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan in 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, which assigned him to a unit that trained pilots."