Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Campus

Coordinates: 40°46′29″N 73°59′06″W / 40.774692°N 73.985015°W / 40.774692; -73.985015

Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Complex

Memorial sculpture by William Tarr

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Campus is a five-story public school facility at 122 Amsterdam Avenue between West 65th and 66th Streets in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, near Lincoln Center. The campus is faced on Amsterdam Avenue by a wide elevated plaza which features a self-weathering steel memorial sculpture by William Tarr.^[1] The same steel, called Mayari R, was used by architect Frost Associates in the curtain wall of the building,^[1] the interior of which has an arrangement of perimeter corridors with floor-to-ceiling windows, leaving many classrooms on the inner side windowless. The school is across West 65th Street from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

The building was formerly the location of Martin Luther King, Jr. High School, which opened in 1975 and was closed in 2005 by the New York City Department of Education due to a history of low academic performance and a low enrollment rate, as well as a history of violence, including the shooting of two tenth grade students inside the school on January 15, 2002, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. The closing of the school was included by Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the education reform policy. The high school graduated its final class on June 27, 2005.

Current configuration

The high school has been replaced by six separate high schools which operate on different floors of the building. Students wear uniforms to distinguish them from the other schools and have separate lunch and dismissal times. The schools, listed by the date of their entry into the campus, are:

• 2002 - High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice
• 2002 - High School of the Arts and Technology
• 2003 - Manhattan/Hunter College High School for Sciences
• 2005 - High School for Arts, Imagination And Inquiry^[2]
• 2006 - Urban Assembly School For Media Studies^[3]
• 2006 - Manhattan Theatre Lab High School^[4] (founded 2004, move into complex 2006)

The first two small, themed high schools were founded within the Martin Luther King campus in 2002 as administratively separate units from the main school. Originally, they were called the Martin Luther King, Jr. High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice and the Martin Luther King, Jr. High School of the Arts and Technology, but both have since officially dropped the "Martin Luther King" name.

The addition of the sixth school was opposed by some parents of the other five, as before the move each school was able to occupy an entire floor.

References

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot (2000). AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812931076. , p.323
2. ^ http://insideschools.org/index12.php?fso=1439&all=y
3. ^ http://insideschools.org/index12.php?fso=1324&all=y
4. ^ http://insideschools.org/index12.php?fso=1335&all=y

External links

• H.S. 490 Martin Luther King Jr. High School at InsideSchools.org
• "Latest Shootings Add to King High School's Reputation for Turbulence", New York Times, Jan. 17, 2002
• "The Metal Detector: Tales From School", New York Times, Sept. 29, 1996
• "Principal Tries to Bolster Image of School Bearing King's Name", New York Times, Jan. 20, 1986
• "Stockholders of a Can Company Take Meeting to 'Partner' School", New York Times, May 23, 1984