James Madison High School, 1926. This Brooklyn high school was established in 1925 at the intersection of Bedford Avenue and Quentin Road (Avenue Q) as the area, then considered part of Sheepshead Bay or Marine Park (today’s Madison neighborhood derives its name from the school), we experiencing a surge in new construction. Madison was to address school overcrowding built at a time of significant population growth in Brooklyn. The school continues to operate out of its original six-story building, which is less notable for its architecture than for the distinguished students who have passed through its halls. Madison graduates include no less than four Nobel Prize winners, two sitting U.S. Senators — Chuck Schumer (‘67) and Bernie Sanders (‘59) — and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (‘50). In a 1993 profile coinciding with Justice Ginsburg’s elevation to the nation’s highest court, the New York Times characterized Madison as “a rarity in American education -- an ethnic melting pot of scholastic overachievers,” noting Ginsburg’s personal record of overachievement: as a student, she was editor of the student newspaper and a cheerleader.

It is easy to see why this was called the “\[T]he most beautiful example of Dutch colonial architecture in Brooklyn,” set as it is behind a white picket fence on a half-acre lawn shaded by mature trees (yes, this really is Brooklyn!). Originally the house faced south, but around 1898 it was turned to face west to avoid having newly-opened East 22nd Street run through its kitchen wing. The slender porch columns supporting the sloping eaves were added then. Just three families have owned the house: the Wyckoffs (descendants of Pieter Claesen Wyckoff), who built it before 1766; the Bennetts, who bought it in 1835 and occupied it until 1982; and the Monts, who bought it in 1983. Two Hessian officers billeted in the house during the American Revolution scratched their names and ranks on windowpanes which survive. The house became a landmark in 1968 and remains a private residence.

In December 2018, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with NPR’s Nina Totenberg for an exclusive interview presented by the Museum of the City of New York. During this sold-out discussion, Justice Ginsburg spoke about her love of opera, her New York City roots, and why, after years in Washington, she still considered herself a Brooklynite. Take a virtual look at RBG's NYC, through places she remembered fondly and those she would have frequented in her youth.