Public School 27 at the corner of Nelson and Hicks Streets, 1930.

This school building was constructed in 1890, but an 1885 Brooklyn Eagle report describes a school operating at the same location five years earlier. The report details unsanitary conditions in the low-lying area: the Slab City shanty town near the Gowanus Canal, “sewerless streets,” tidal and runoff ponds, and a “vast public dumping ground” along Delevan Street between Richards and Dwight Streets.