It’s hard to imagine what school was like inside buildings like this! A list of suggested textbooks from 1892 can help us understand what subjects were on the daily schedule. Reading lists included books like "Excellent Quotations", "Young Folks' History of the United States", "This Continent of Ours."

While early school buildings may have looked a little different from today, innovators like Charles Snyder helped create buildings that look a little more familiar. Snyder, New York City’s Chief of the Building Bureau of the Board of Education, reimagined school buildings to create healthy spaces for learning and growing. He toured Europe to look at building designs, and came up with building dimensions that would allow maximum light in the center of the classroom – a welcome relief for students who lived in cramped, dark tenement buildings. Many of Snyder’s buildings still stand today:

Board of Education records talk about everything from the discipline of pupils, to additions to the reading lists, as well as the creation of colored schools, aimed particularly at educating African American students.

Schools today often have names that are more interesting than “Number 1” or “Number 2,” and we can read articles from the Brooklyn Collection’s newspaper clippings files that shed light on decisions to choose school names that would honor notable people or draw attention to special skills that students could learn at these new schools:

And finally, what kinds of skills could students learn in Brooklyn's schools over the history of our borough? Today’s learners might be amazed to see photographs of classes in watchmaking and house building. From learning to drive at the Automotive High School...

To more recognizable fare such as music lessons...

To skills you might not expect in the city like Urban Farming...

To some you REALLY might not expect.