Opened:

Jan. 17, 1889.

Located:

Northwest corner of Second Ave. and Forty-fourth St.

The address was variously given as 241, 247, or 249 East Forty-fourth St.

Built to replace:

East Thirty-fifth Street LH.

Construction funded by:

Morris K. Jesup.

Building dimensions:

Five stories. Ground dimensions: 50 x 100 feet.

Accommodations:

125 boys.

Building notes:

Built in the "old Holland style," which a high sharp roof, steep gables, and dormer windows. There was clock tower in the center. The architect was Calvert Vaux, the same who co-designed Central Park.

Its three dormitories held 100 "regular price" beds, with 25 more expensive ones.

The building also contained bathrooms, an audience room, two kindergarten rooms, a nursery, and several school rooms. There was additionally a gymnasium, library, free reading room, and laundry.

At a bend in the main stairway, a large brass tablet read: "Forty-fourth Street Lodging House for Homeless Boys. Erected For the Children's Aid Society by Morris K. Jesup, 1888." In a school room, a church window was placed in memory of Morris Jesup Dodge.

The School was also known as the East River School. In the day there was an average attendance of 300 students (in 1899), plus a night school in the winter.

In addition, there was the crippled boys' brush shop. There, the boys (about 15 of them at any one time) made brushes of all kinds by hand, except for hairbrushes, as there was "no market for hand-made hairbrushes since the introduction of the machine-made product." The shop would take orders for custom styles as well. They charged the public prices comparable to any other factory, and in fact the CAS encouraged the purchase of these brushes as helping out a good cause.

1898 Atlas.

A small piece from the Atlas of the city of New York, Bromley, 1898-1899.

Forty-fourth Street runs along the south wall of the building; Second Ave. along the east side.

What became of it?

In 1925, the CAS closed the LH and worked with the Kips Bay Boys' Club to establish a boys' club in the building, to provide tenement boys a safe place for recreation (as opposed to street-gangs, poolrooms and dance-halls). As a clubhouse, the building provided facilities for 1500 boys, with a gymnasium, games rooms, library, showers, and clubrooms.

In 1929, the CAS sold the building.

Still standing?

No. By 1933, the building had been demolished, and simple playground equipment was put up on the site.