P.S. 47 American Sign Language & English Schools

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6-story Beaux-Arts school completed in 1925 as P.S. 47 School for the Deaf, which was founded in 1908 as the city's first public school for deaf children, in a smaller 4-story building on the same site. Designed by Gompert, the current building is U-shaped, with wings on both 23rd and 24th Streets wrapping around a central courtyard. The school went through various name changes through the course of its existence. In 1998, P.S. 47 became one of the first schools in the country to teach students primarily through American Sign Language. In 2005, "47" split into two schools sharing the same building: “47” The American Sign Language and English Lower School, which serves grades PK–8, and “47” The American Sign Language and English Secondary School, serving grades 9–12. An expansion of the school was carried out in the mid-1970s, when it was known as Junior High School 47, into the base of the high-rise residential building to the east (see separate entry).

The facades are clad in red brick with limestone and white terra-cotta trim. The south wing on 23rd Street has a stone ground floor with a central entrance bay. It has bright red double-doors topped by four small pointed-arch fanlights, set in a stone segmental-arch. Moldings top two small single-windows to the sides, and above the doorway a Gothic font reads PUBLIC SCHOOL 47. This center section slightly projects and at the base of the 2nd floor it has a wealth of Gothic ornament, with shields, pointed-arch panels, quatrefoils, and a pair of small gargoyles perched at the ends. On either side of the center bay, the ground floor has two large bays of four windows and end bays with secondary entrances that are very similar to the center entrance.

The upper floors of the south facade have five large bays of four windows, with quoined stone enframements and mullions, and narrower end bays with single-windows, also with stone quoins. Each bay is slightly recessed between the brick piers, and the brick spandrels between floors feature geometric brickwork with trios of various shapes in terra-cotta (single shapes at the end bays). At the top floor the main bays change to three slightly wider pointed-arch windows set in terra-cotta, with projecting terra-cotta overlays on the piers, each topped by a point. The roof line has large crenelations, with trios of them at each bay consisting of a terra-cotta panel bearing a quatrefoil, and raised end sections. The upper floors of the side elevations are faced in plain concrete.

The north facade on 24th Street has a matching design on the 2nd-5th floors, except that the terra-cotta on the piers of the top floor have been lowered to the 5th floor. The ground floor has no openings and is set behind a basement areaway with an iron fence for almost its entire length, except at both ends where there are entrances like those on 23rd Street. The 6th floor is simplified, with practically no ornament, and the shade of brick is a little lighter. The bay have three main vertical windows, each subdivided into a grid of smaller panes (one such window at the narrower end bays).

www.schools.nyc.gov/schools/M347