By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School has opened a new multi-million-dollar facility in Greenwich Village that will allow the school to expand its programs and increase enrollment.
The school held a ceremony on Friday to celebrate the completion of the new facility at 40 Charlton St. with faculty, parents and students on hand. The new teaching space is part of the high school's most ambitious development project in its 89-year history.
“The expansion allows us to enlarge our high school and continue to improve the program so we can offer the very best, progressive secondary education,” said Little Red School House director Phil Kassen. “We will continue to be a resource for the community and a leader in establishing new educational practices.”
The new wing of the school includes a sky-lighted student center and new faculty offices and classrooms. They were designed by local architect Andrew Bartle with textile carpeting by Suzanne Tick, who is the mother of a graduating senior at the school.
Longtime Greenwich Village resident Art Bence, who lived at 40 Charlton St. for many years and whose daughter attended the school, sold the property to the school for $4.1 million. The building had been in his family since the early 1900s.
“I am thrilled we sold it to the school,” he told DNAinfo. “We are so proud to see what the school has done with it.”
The revamp is part of a $25 million expansion plan that will see enrollment jump from 567 students currently to some 640 and provide an arts center that will host lectures and programs for the community in the Village.
The next phase of the project involves construction a whole new five-story “arts pavilion” in the courtyard of the new brownstone that will have a digital film studio, sculpture room and more.
“This is going to be a great asset to the school and the Village,” said the school’s PTA co-chair Kim Hostler, who has two children at the school. “It really is a community school.”
Final construction will be on a renovation of the theater and an addition of three more floors of classrooms, both in the main building.
The school aims to complete the project for the 2012-2013 school year.
