A collection of schools across New York City.

Henry Street, south side between Oliver and Catherine Street, Manhattan, showing P.S. #1, 1920. One of four public schools in New York City that have used the name“P.S. 1”, the C.B.J. Snyder designed school was completed in 1897. When opened it served the largely Italian immigrant neighborhood. Subsequent immigration waves included Polish and Russian Jews during and after World War I and later Puerto Ricans and Chinese students. It is believed that this school had the very first rooftop playground. Famous alum include singers Luther Vandross and Eddie Cantor, as well as actors Jimmy Durante and Robert Loggia. Fun fact: This school's origins date to the New York Free School 1, founded in 1809, which predates even the city's Board of Education, set up in 1842.

In the early 1900s, about 70% of children who attended public schools on the Lower East Side were immigrants or children of immigrants. These students had needs that were different from those of students who attended New York City schools in, say, the mid-1800s. They were coming from homes where English was not the primary language and from families with their own cultures and traditions. So Lower East Side schools became a kind of laboratory for ideas about how to welcome immigrant children into American life. Schools taught the so-called three Rs – reading, writing, and arithmetic – but also what some educators believed were lessons in “Americanization.” Part of the curriculum? The pledge of allegiance, how to celebrate patriotic holidays, and even Christian hymns. It was a curriculum influenced by then-common views of the benefits of assimilation. But schools were more than a place for immigrant kids to learn about America. They also became a laboratory of ideas about how immigrant kids could one day make it in America. And that meant a whole slew of classes that would have been unfamiliar to students only a generation earlier.

C.B.J. Snyder was an architect and mechanical engineer who served as Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education between 1891 and 1923. During his tenure he was responsible for the design and construction of more than 350 elementary, middle, and high schools in the five boroughs. Snyder is know for innovating the design and construction process. The resulting schools have been praised for their high quality, longevity, and architectural beauty. Snyder worked in a number of styles, favoring Beaux Arts, English Collegiate Gothic, and Renaissance Revival. Another feature of his buildings were their mid-block location, preferring to keep these places of education away from the busy, noisy, and (perceived) pollution of the avenues. He believed that schools were civic monuments that were necessary for a better society and he focused on health and safety issues, improving the fire protection, ventilation, lighting, and classroom size.

You submitted, and we rounded up our faves! Here are some spectacular shots of New Yorkers at school over the years.