‘Open Streets’ Return for Schools; East Side Is Well Represented

Plenty of “Open Streets” will be coming to Manhattan this fall, in conjunction with the school year, the NYC Department of Transportation has announced. There will be a record-breaking 72 street closures citywide, 23 of which will be in Manhattan.

The vast majority of the schools that will see street closures are private institutions, by more than a 3-to-1 ratio. The East Side and Upper East Side will be well represented, with 10 schools on the list.

The Manhattan closures will be located at the following schools and streets, for starters: The Dalton School (East 91st Street), The École (East 22nd Street), P.S. 042–The Benjamin Altman School (Hester Street), The Nightingale Bamford School (East 92nd Street), The Academy of St. Joseph (Washington Place), The Buckley School (East 73rd Street), Saint David’s School (East 89th Street), Manhattan Day School (West 75th Street), P.S. 343–The Peck Slip School (Peck Slip), Collegiate School (Freedom Place South), and P.S. 003– Charrette School (Hudson Street at Grove Street).

There will be also be closures at The Allen-Stevenson School (East 78th Street), Friends Seminary (Rutherford Place), City-As-School (Clarkson Street), Community Health Academy of the Heights (West 158th Street), I.S. 528 Bea Fuller Rodgers School (Wadsworth Avenue), P.S. 112 Jose Celso Barbosa (East 119th Street), Washington Irving Educational Campus (Irving Place), Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy II Elementary School (East 111th Street), The Birch Wathen Lenox School (East 77th Street), and Global Community Charter School (West 142nd Street).

“Through our Open Streets program, we have created a new framework to reimagine the use of street space outside schools so students can safely learn, develop new skills, and their parents and guardians can have easier pickups and drop-offs,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement.

“Open Streets has brought new energy and joy to our school community,” Bea Fuller Rodgers Intermediate School 528 assistant principal Genelly Cornelio said. “It’s given our students space to learn, play, and connect in fresh and meaningful ways — turning each day into an opportunity for movement, creativity, and togetherness.”

The DOT will also be continuing the “We’re Walking Here” contest, a related safety education initiative, in which students “create public service announcement videos to warn of the dangers of reckless driving and traffic fatalities.” The four winners of last year’s contest can be found online, while submissions for this year’s contest are being accepted until Oct. 3.

The Birch Wathen Lenox School’s East 77th Street street closure, specifically, has already been the source of a fair bit of drama. When the school first came before Community Board 8 last year, hoping to earn its advisory blessing of the closure plans, it was roundly shot down; a majority of board members objected to the school shutting down the street for five hours a day.

That motion of disapproval changed to a motion of approval by this July, however, when the school agreed to reorient its Open Streets application around shorter hours. After representatives from the school apologized to CB8 for prior miscommunication, the board issued a unanimous resolution supporting the revised application.

Since the Department of Transportation is ultimately responsible for signing off on Open Streets applications, it appears that they were suitably impressed by Birch Wathen’s revised plans as well.