WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES JULY 16, 2020 19
Brief lesson on the rise of a Long Island City art mecca
BY THE OLD TIMER
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
P.S. 1 in Long Island City hasn’t
featured a class in nearly 60 years,
but the institution continues to
educate generations on a higher and
more intricate degree.
Located at 22-25 Jackson Ave., P.S. 1
currently serves as an annex to the
Museum of Modern Art, showcasing
all kinds of contemporary exhibits
enjoyed by thousands of visitors each
year. The building itself, however, is by
no means contemporary; it’s a repurposed
Romanesque schoolhouse built
a full fi ve years before New York City,
as we know it, came to be.
The school was actually built during
the fi nal years when Long Island City
was its own entity. Opened in 1893, the
First Ward School of Long Island City
served a growing population in LIC,
which was about 40,000 back then.
When Queens became incorporated
into the Greater City of New York in
1898, the city’s Board of Education assumed
control of the First Ward School
and renamed it P.S. 1 Queens. Over the
next 64 years, it would educate generations
of children in the Long Island City
area through two world wars and a
Great Depression.
But by 1963, P.S. 1 had closed its doors.
The closure occurred at a time when
New York City began a steady economic
decline, and the building wound up
being dormant for the next 14 years —
save for a brief stint as a warehouse.
With the city not needing additional
school space at the time, some in the
community began thinking outside
of the box with regard to an alternate
purpose for the grand old schoolhouse.
That led to the arrival of Alanna
Heiss.
In 1971, Heiss founded the Institute
for Art and Urban Resources Inc.,
which sought to create art exhibitions
in underutilized and abandoned spaces
across New York. P.S. 1 turned out to be
an ideal location for such a purpose.
Five years later, Heiss helped open
the “Rooms” exhibit at P.S. 1; artists
were invited to create brand new
works of art within the environs of the
former schoolhouse. That was the start
of P.S. 1’s new life as an art gallery, and a
harbinger of the cultural revolution in
Long Island City to come decades later.
Over the two decades that followed,
artists continued to use P.S. 1 for studio
space, performance arenas and
exhibits. It was closed for a period
before reopening in 1997 as the P.S. 1
Contemporary Art Center. While the
interior was modernized to accommodate
contemporary art, the renovations
moved forward with care to respect the
building’s original architecture.
The exterior of P.S. 1 in Long Island City as shown in about 1908.
Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives/reprinted with permission
Students, parents and teachers attending a lecture at P.S. 1 in this 1910 photo.
Three years aft er reopening, in 2000,
the Museum of Modern Art took over
the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and
renamed it MoMA P.S. 1. It continues to
this day attracting new contemporary
artists and programs highlighting
their work.
The New York City Municipal Archives
shared with us a few photos
of P.S. 1 of old, when it served as an
educational facility for children back
in the early 20th century.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
MoMA P.S. 1 remains off -limits to
the public for now; Phase 4 of the reopening
would allow such museums
to reopen on a limited basis, but the
date for when that might happen is
unclear.
Sources: The Museum of Modern
Art; TimeOut magazine; Wikimedia
Commons; and “P.S. 1: A School for the
Centuries,” by Lorraine Passero.
* * *
If you have any remembrances or old
photographs of “Our Neighborhood: The
Way It Was” that you would like to share
with our readers, please write to the Old
Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 38-15 Bell
Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361, or send an email
to editorial@ridgewoodtimes.com. Any
print photographs mailed to us will be
carefully returned to you upon request.
/WWW.QNS.COM
link
link
link
link
