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.