As part of its efforts to reduce overcrowding in the city’s public school system, the New York City School Construction Authority asked us to develop the master plan for a campus of high schools in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. The available land for the new campus occupies a long, narrow site adjoining a railway track. Our master plan organizes the site in a linear fashion that echoes the geometry of the tracks and the city street grid.
To expand the buildable area, we proposed building over the railway tracks below 145th Street, where they emerge from underground to run alongside the playing fields. We developed several schemes ranging from a six-school campus extending the length of the site to a compact, four-school plan occupying the site’s northern portion. This latter scheme was chosen for development.