Julia Richman High School is a defunct comprehensive high school in New York City, New York. Built in 1923 and located at East 67th Street and Second Avenue, the building was the only public high school in the Upper East Side of New York. The school is named after Julia Richman, the first woman district superintendent of schools in New York City. For much of the school's history it was a girl's high school; it changed to co-educational in 1967.
In 1995, after years of academic decline, the city reorganized the school into six separately functioning small schools within a building renamed as the Julia Richman Education Complex.
Hunter College (City University of New York) is anticipated to acquire the school site. Schools chancellor Joel Klein has joined this effort. Community members and local elected officials, including city council member Jessica Lappin and State Senator Liz Krueger, have formally voiced their opposition to the plan, saying that "a preference by one CUNY school for expansion convenient to its existing campus is simply not a sufficient rationale" to "uproot six outstanding public schools." Hunter College seeks to build a science tower on the site of the school. In 2007, Hunter College offered the Julia Richman Education Complex one of its properties at East 25th Street. Under the plan, the JREC schools would temporarily relocate to a site near the East River Drive while Hunter builds a new site for JREC.
The New York City schools now operating at the Julia Richman campus are:
- Manhattan International High School
- Talent Unlimited High School
- Vanguard High School
- Urban Academy Laboratory
- The Ella Baker School (M225)
- School for Autistic Children (226)
Notable alumni
- Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, German-American physicist
- Lauren Bacall, film and stage actress and model
- Cathy Berberian, soprano and composer
- Big L, rapper
- Carmen Contreras-Bozak, first Hispanic to serve in the U.S. Women's Army Corps
- Geraldine Brooks, actress
- Jade Trini Goring, contemporary gospel music singer
- Patricia Highsmith, novelist and short story writer
- Judy Holliday, actress
- Sondra Lipton, model and painter
- Lisa Lisa (born Lisa Velez), musician
- Gene Anthony Ray, actor, dancer, and choreographer
- Sue Simmons, TV journalist and broadcaster
- Cynthia Toohey, Alaska state legislator
- Samuel E Vázquez, visual artist
References
External links
- Website for successor Julia Richman Educational Complex
- Page to preserve site
- Alumni page
- Alumni noted in "New York Times", 1963
- NYC Department of Education: Manhattan International High School
- NYC Department of Education: Talent Unlimited High School
- NYC Department of Education: Vanguard High School
