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    Friends of the Upper East Side > Cultural Spaces of Immigrant Yorkville > American Female Guardian Society Industrial School 7 (now First Hungarian Baptist Church)- 225 East 80th Street

American Female Guardian Society Industrial School 7 (now First Hungarian Baptist Church)- 225 East 80th Street

January 7, 2025
American Female Guardian Society Industrial School 7 (now First Hungarian Baptist Church)
225 East 80th Street
New York
NY

THEN

This beautiful three-story striped brick structure was built in 1893. Designed in the Romanesque Revival style by Fowler & Hough, the colorful exterior has distinctive terracotta elements, including an elaborate arched door hood. Social reformer Jacob Riis described industrial schools as planted “squarely in the gap between the tenement and public school.” Founded in 1834, by the 1850s the American Female Guardian Society had begun to focus children, opening 12 industrial schools in Manhattan. “Needy children, four years of age and older, [were] admitted without charge.” Such schools provided vocational training, civic lessons, and basic necessities. The New York City Baptist Mission Society acquired the building in 1918. It was converted to an Hungarian Baptist Church, containing “a sewing school, clubs and classes for boys and girls, women’s meetings, and a Home for Hungarian working girls.”