An elementary school frozen in time, exposed to the elements

The man behind Bluejake, Jake Dobkin, took some pretty amazing photographs at an abandoned public school building in Harlem. He didn’t post the exact location, but I’m pretty sure it’s the old PS 186 building on 145th Street and Broadway. The school closed in the mid-1970s after parents protested unsafe conditions in the building and the city built a new school across the street. According to a 2007 New York Sun article, the city sold the building for $215,000 in 1986 (just over $400,000 today) to a Boys and Girls Club that promised to redevelop it but never did. Back in 2005, WNYC aired a story saying that Harlem teens were leading a campaign to draw attention to the school.