Little Red Square

What was here before?

The Bethlehem Church, built in 1920 by the firm George B. Post and Sons, formerly occupied the space adjacent to the site. The pink stucco church served newly arrived Italian immigrants and provided a community space, classrooms, and a nursery. The church closed in 1930, and the property was purchased in 1932 to become the new home of the Little Red Schoolhouse.

How did this site become a square?

Little Red Square is part of the Greenstreets program, which is a joint project of NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation. Beginning in 1986, this initiative converted paved street properties, such as triangles and malls, into green spaces.

The site was renovated in 2021 and includes a new seating area, brick pavers, and plantings.

Who is this square named for?

Little Red Square gets its name from the adjoining Little Red Schoolhouse, the creation of Elizabeth Irwin (1880-1942), an early advocate for progressive education. She established the school so children would be able to “learn through life experience.”  Along with John Dewey (1859-1952), Caroline Pratt (1867-1954), and Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878-1967), Irwin rejected the notion of seated students passively absorbing information from a teacher or textbook.

In Little Red’s classrooms, pupils freely moved around the room, working on various projects with classmates. These educational reformers believed that children cooking together from a recipe learned reading, mathematics, and science more effectively than from a textbook and practiced social skills as well. Artistic expression -- including music, dance, theater, and the fine arts -- was also an important component of the curriculum. In addition, Irwin was a great believer in a diverse student body and stressed the principles of social justice. In the 1920s and 30s, these were radical ideas, though many of their methods have been incorporated into today’s classrooms. Because of its progressive views, pupils were referred to as “red diaper babies”, a sly reference to communism and Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

The Little Red Schoolhouse began in 1916 as a group of classes in P.S. 64, which were supported by the principal Louis Marks (1876-1943). In 1921, the classes moved to a red brick annex of P.S. 61, and again to P.S. 41 before finding a permanent home at Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street in 1932. In the early 1930s, the conservative Depression-era Board of Education no longer supported Irwin's experimental methods and withheld funding from the school. At a gathering in a Sixth Avenue ice-cream parlor, the parents agreed that they rather would pay tuition than lose Little Red. At Irwin’s insistence, the cost was set low enough to keep the school from becoming an enclave for the privileged few. The reasonable cost and generous scholarship program have kept Little Red accessible to all income groups. Elizabeth Irwin High School was added in 1941.

Today, Little Red Schoolhouse remains an innovative educational institution that fosters active learning, creativity, diversity, and social justice.