A photo from the 1930s showing P.S. 69, formerly known as P.S. 4, at 155 Ryerson Street, between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues. Photo Source: New York Public Library.
For over fifty years, there stood a beautiful three-story school building at 155 Ryerson Street, near Myrtle Avenue, in the footprint of where the new Key Food Supermarket is slated to reopen in September.
Originally opened in the 1870’s, Public School No. 4 served local children who lived between Lafayette Avenue and the Navy Yard in (what is now referred to as) the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. By 1876, the school had over 1,500 stude#Tnts enrolled.
By the 1920s, enrollment began to decline, making room available for other uses in the building. By 1929 sixteen of the school’s rooms were used as an annex space for the overcrowded Brooklyn Technical High School. The high school was so overcrowded that P.S. 4 (which had been renamed P.S. 69) had four annexes sprinkled throughout the neighborhood.
By 1942 the small school building and dwindling enrollment allowed the board of education to close the schedule and reassign students to other primary schools nearby. Shortly after, the Department of Sanitation opened offices in the building and remained there until the mid-1950s. At that point, the Willoughby Walk cooperative apartments were planned for the site, which were planned under Robert Moses’ watch as part of a city-wide redevelopment plan.
By the end of the decade, the school building had been demolished (along with everything else on the block). In its place stood a one-story commercial building which once housed an A&P supermarket. More recently, that supermarket space was occupied by Associated Supermarket. The same owners plan on returning to the site, within the new building at 490 Myrtle Avenue, and opening a Key Food grocery store before the end of September.
Corner of Myrtle Avenue and Ryerson Street, as seen in 1969, with the Willoughby Walk Co-ops in the background.
490 Myrtle Avenue, as seen in July 2015. By September, the new Key Food Supermarket plans to open in the building. Photo Credit: Aufgang Architects.
