Curtis High School ca. 1905

Curtis High School (1902-1904) was the first public building constructed on the Island after consolidation. The school was sited on a hill with Harbor views and was designed in the neo-Gothic style by Superintendent of School Buildings C.B.J. Snyder. The school was named after Staten Island resident George William Curtis, the editor of Putnam’s Magazine and Harper’s Weekly, and a colleague and friend of landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing.