'Hard to Wrap Your Mind Around': Downtown's New Elementary School

The new PS 150 has two rooftop play spaces. This one was built atop a city landmark, the 1810 Robert and Anne Dickey House. The interior of that building is connected to the portion of the school that is at the base of 77 Greenwich Street, a residential tower. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

“You are the very first class in the history of the universe to have a class in this room,” music teacher Tony Kunin told the 3rd graders who had just taken seats in his classroom on Thursday, the first day of school. “If you’re excited about that, give thumbs up.”

Needless to say, all thumbs rose. And indeed, there have been plenty more thumbs ups, from teachers, parents and students, for this brand new, 8-story, $104 million building that is now the home of tiny PS 150, the pre-k to 5th grade (and before it a pre-k to 2nd grade) that had occupied a two-story, third-floor annex of Tribeca’s Independence Plaza apartment complex since 1988.

The school, at 28-42 Trinity Place, is built into the new 500-foot condominium tower at 77 Greenwich Street, between Rector and Edgar Streets, and includes the adjacent, freshly restored 1810 Robert and Anne Dickey House, a city landmark. Work continues on the condo, so scaffolding and netting now hang over the sidewalk where children will eventually congregate for arrival and dismissal. 

The building is outfitted with two rooftop recreational spaces, a combination gym and auditorium, and a “multipurpose” room with a stage that can also serve as an auditorium. There is a science lab, art room, library with thousands of new books, and Kunin’s sound-proofed music room, along with spacious teachers lounge, counselors offices, and more. From hallway windows are views of New York Harbor, Battery Park and, across Edgar Street, Elizabeth Berger Plaza. For the first time, PS 150 students will eat in an actual cafeteria, and a sizable, thoroughly outfitted one at that.

“I think I’m most excited about a cafeteria,” kindergarten teacher Marcie Jacobson said, laughing. “Lunch was hard.”

In the former building students had lunch in either their classroom or at cafeteria tables in the music room. Teachers ate in what was a combination conference, copier, and storage room. 

“It’s so nice that the kids have a space—and there’s so much space—and it’s a beautiful room, and the amount of food that’s going to be there!” Jacobson said. “There’s going to be a salad bar. So many different choices for them.”

So vastly different are the former and current school buildings that they defy comparison.

“It’s hard to wrap your mind around,” said Principal Nico Victorino, 37, who is starting his second year with the school after serving as assistant principal for eight years at PS/IS 276 in Battery Park City.  

Fifth grader Gabriel Statescu said the new building looks more like a middle school, or even a high school. “It has eight floors,” he said. “It’s just crazy to me.”

Not including the 3-k and pre-k classes, the school now has an enrollment of only 161. Starting out with two kindergarten classes and one class per 1st to 5th grades, the school aims to add one class each year until enrollment eventually reaches three classes per grade. For now, rooms sit empty. One is planned as a computer lab, another just for chess. Still another will be a dedicated reading room.

Beginning last summer, Victorino said, he has spent much of his first year planning for the massive move. In an interview in the building, a week before the first day of school, and only a week after the building received its temporary certificate of occupancy, workers were everywhere getting the facility ready. (On the first day of school, the cafeteria kitchen was without gas, and Anna Guereros, who is in charge of the cafeteria, prepared lunch that morning at another school.) 

“Over the past couple of months it’s been stressful just managing all the stuff from the old site,” Victorino said. “The new building wasn’t ready to receive all the materials, so they were put in storage. Delivery is still ongoing.”

“Packing was a nightmare, because we had to do it while school was going on. We were living with boxes all over the place,” said Christine Walford, the school’s secretary since 1994. “That was hard. But it was worth it.” 

Laura Cohen, who is both parent coordinator and school librarian, pointed to boxes filled with books from the old building—6,000 to 7,000, she estimated. They still needed to be unpacked and evaluated for racial sensitivity, she said. By November, Cohen figured, she’ll be done. She said she wants to distribute the books so that they are not just in the library and classrooms. “We’re going to have libraries everywhere,” she said

The move from Tribeca to the Financial District is the latest chapter in a school history that began in 1988 as the Early Childhood Center, a pre-kindergarten to 2nd grade. ECC, as it was called, opened when the first tenant of the Independence Plaza annex, the Independence School, became PS 234 and moved into its own building down Greenwich Street. (The Independence School began in 1976 to largely serve the few children in the newly opened complex.) 

Converted to a one-class-per-grade pre-k to 5th grade in September, 2001, local parents continued to choose the un-zoned PS 150 as a cozier alternative to Tribeca’s fast-growing PS 234. In 2013, they successfully fought [1] a Department of Education plan to move the students to a new school on West 17th Street, zoned for children in the Village and Chelsea. (The DOE plan pitted parents against teachers [2], who nearly all supported it.) Five years later, parents protested [3] a DOE proposal to fold the PS 150 community into the Peck Slip School after Independence Plaza landlord, Vornado, refused to extend the school’s lease beyond the current 2018-19 school year. Mayor Bill de Blasio interceded [4] with Vornado CEO Stephen Roth, and the school received an eviction reprieve until the new building’s opening on Trinity Place. 

“We all loved the other location. But we knew it was going to end,” said Raphaela Logullo, the mother of a PS 150 3rd grader, and a 7th grader who also attended the school. “We got lucky twice with being able to extend the lease.” (Victorino said that nearly all the parents chose to continue sending their children to PS 150 rather to their zoned schools, including P.S. 234. All but one teacher also returned.)

Even amid the excitement over the new, high-end facility, for some the little school building—not to mention its convenience to Tribeca parents—is not easy to leave behind.

Victorino said there are “cultural aspects” of the tiny old school that he doesn't want to lose in “this gigantic, beautiful, brand new school.”

“My biggest concern is having a really strong core community, a strong school culture,” he said. “Teachers are proud to work here. Parents are proud to send their kids here. How do I maintain that when we’re expanding? I think it’s a big challenge this year.” 

If the city will allow him, Victorino added, he would like to see the school grow as slowly as possible “to try to maintain that strong sense of community. If we expand too fast, it becomes harder to focus on that.”

The move to the new building “is very bittersweet in the sense that we have such a big space,” said 1st grade teacher Wendy Liu, who is beginning her sixth year at the school and 11th as a teacher. “I’m excited about the space but I miss the old one because everyone was so much closer. But I think as we have more kids filling the hallways we’ll get that feeling back.” 

“The home feel is what you make of it,” she added.

PS 150 teachers have said that a downside of the one-class-per-grade PS 150 was the absence of colleagues who share the same grade, an issue that arose when teachers supported the DOE’s proposed move to Chelsea. Now, as the school grows, said 5th grade teacher Parija Desai, “we’ll have an opportunity to collaborate with another 5th grade classroom, and bringing in new staff is always exciting.”

For now, the school feels oddly quiet and empty, and some teachers are said to be anxious about how the school will fill its empty rooms. But Lenmara Ametova, the school nurse, seemed to revel in her office suite of three rooms, the largest of which was still bare. Happily showing a visitor around, she stood in the middle of that room, spread her arms wide, and smiled. “I’m queen of the 6th floor!” she said.