Manhattan Trade School for Girls

The ten-story Collegiate Gothic building standing at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 22nd Street was once a radical experiment in social and educational reform. Opened in 1918, it served as the permanent home for the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, which was the first vocational school for female students in the United States. While it appears to be a standard school building, its architecture was specifically designed to mimic the loft-style factories where its students would eventually work. The facility was intended to bridge the gap between childhood and the demanding industrial workforce, providing training that was desperately needed by the city's growing immigrant population at the start of the twentieth century.