page_title: Little Red School House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Little Red School House / History
caption_attribution_description: LREI's Elisabeth Irwin High School at 40 Charlton Street between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street in the South Village section of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built c.1900. It is located within the Charlton - King - Vandam Historic District. (Sources: "NYCLPC Charlton - King - Vandam Designation Report" and NYC GIS map)
context_page_description: The Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, also referred to as LREI, is a school in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by Elisabeth Irwin in 1921 as the Little Red School House, and is regarded as the city's first progressive school. Created as a joint public-private educational experiment, the school tested principles of progressive education that had been advocated since the turn of the 20th century by John Dewey. The founders postulated that the lessons of progressive education could be applied successfully in the crowded, ethnically diverse public schools of the nation's largest city.
context_section_description: In 1932, after the onset of the Great Depression caused the Public Education Association to withdraw the funding that had allowed the school to exist within the New York City public school system, William O'Shea, the superintendent of schools – who had previously tried to close down the program because of its progressive ideas – announced that the school would be eliminated because of a budgetary crisis.  Parents raised sufficient funds to pay for salaries, but O'Shea refused to accept the money, and the school was forced to turn to private funding.  It moved to a building on Bleecker Street provided at no cost by the First Presbyterian Church and began a new life as an independent school.
  The Little Red School House consists of a lower school, a middle school, and a high school. In the 1940s the Little Red School House's high-school students decided they wanted their school to be named after its founder, Elisabeth Irwin, making the full title of the institution The Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School.
caption: Elisabeth Irwin High School at 40 Charlton Street
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