Except from Brownstoner article on 4/8/2026
The Landmarks Preservation Commission noted the building's "architectural significance and its role in expanding educational opportunities for women, immigrants, and working-class New Yorkers."
The three-story brick building at 372 Schermerhorn Street was once called one of the handsomest schools in the city, according to LPC. It was first built as an extension of Public School 15, then was taken over by a girls continuation school in the 1920s. In the evenings, it held adult education classes for both women and men and became a place for immigrants to learn English and get vocational training.
The school was affected by the Depression and closed in 1942, when the Department of Education established it as an outpatient clinic for child psychology and used it to integrate mental health services into schools. In the 1990s, it was turned into a business school and, in recent years, the building has housed the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the city’s first public school to have an Arabic and English dual language program.
More recently, the site of Public School 15 and the Annex were included in the rezoning for @thealloyblock. As part of the development, which chiefly comprises residential towers, Alloy has built two new public schools in cooperation with the Educational Construction Fund. The developer is also preserving part of Public School 15 in the project and is fully preserving and adaptively reusing the Public School 15 Annex. - @brownstoner
