Former Long Island schools you can live in

Thinking about going back to school? You can do it without taking classes — by taking up residence, instead, at one of the former Long Island schools that have been converted into homes.

Laurel Hollow has an 80-student schoolhouse built in 1896. Elsewhere you'll find apartments carved out of schools built in the Roaring '20s and closed in the cash-strapped '70s. And while you might never guess that Fairfield Square at East Meadow used to be an elementary school or Fairfield at East Islip a junior high, the Lincoln Farm Apartments in Huntington still very much look from the outside like the Lincoln Elementary School it used to be.

Two of these apartment houses are rental: one is subsidized lower-income housing and the single-family schoolhouse is for sale. They embody the story of Long Island's rapid growth, of declining enrollment as the Baby Boom generation graduated, of buildings abandoned to vandalism and decay, and of rebirth as the Island shifts again. 

What's the attraction to living in a former school converted into condominiums or co ops? "Part of the appeal of these buildings are the oversized windows, high ceilings and wide hallways," said Peggy Moriarty, an associate real estate broker with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty. She notes that the Halesite condominiums Nathan Hale Manor, formerly the Nathan Hale School, have notably large rooms and an indoor basketball half-court.

History can't be denied. But with these historic buildings, at least, history can be bought or leased.

Replacing the 18th-century one-room schoolhouse originally serving the area, the building known as Second West Side School was completed in 1896, according to the Cold Spring Harbor Central School District's official history.

A two-room schoolhouse with a detached wood shop in back, Second West Side School by the late 1930s had become insufficient, and the present West Side School rose on Laurel Hollow Road in Syosset. So, in December 1941, the school district sold Second West Side School to Theophil Laanes, an Estonian-born naturalized-citizen chemist and research assistant at the Carnegie Institute in Cold Spring Harbor, and his wife, Alice Gould Laanes, with whom he had two small children.

By 1978, the home was owned by Thomas Giaccone. In a 1999 letter to the Village of Laurel Hollow, he described it at the time of purchase as being "in extremely poor condition ... The building had no closets, a very small (one-room) cellar in which one cannot stand erect and which houses an oil burner, water heater and oil tank and a totally inadequate garage which had to be demolished." The shed that had housed the wood shop suffered the same fate.

But Giaccone had fixed up the rest of the house pretty well, recalled broker Moriarty, who had the listing in 1999 and now again. "The owner was a very cool guy," she said. "I forget what he did for a living, but he had some great artwork in it. I sold it for $350,000."

The former schoolhouse sold again in 2005, but went into foreclosure in 2016 and remained so until real estate developer Jack Cohen bought it in May 2022.

"It had been vacant for at least five years," said Cohen. "But it was not a bad house. It just needed to be prettied up." By that time, it had three bedrooms and 1½ baths, and a swimming pool in a space where a former owner had built a tennis court, Cohen said.

Currently on the market for $899,000, the 2,200-square-foot two-story home on 0.62 acre has an eat-in kitchen, formal dining room, entrance foyer, pantry, brick patio and large balcony. Yet a few historic details remain.

"The beams are notched and there were some wood pegs," Cohen said. "There's some [latter-day] steel that was added to support the house, which is pretty common for buildings from around the early 1900s."

Is the home's history a draw? Moriarty thinks probably not. "I hesitate to use the word ‘historic' because people think there're going to be restrictions" limiting the types of renovations that can be made, she said. "But according to Jack, there are no restrictions. And there's a tremendous amount of charm to it."

Opening to students in 1928, according to Scott Eckers’ "Hidden History of East Meadow" (The History Press, 2022), the redbrick Newbridge Road School was the district’s second public elementary school. Expansions were added in phases, to accommodate the area’s growing population, and the school was greatly enlarged in the baby-boom ’50s.

With enrollment in decline two decades later, Newbridge Road School closed in June 1976, one of two East Meadow schools shuttered that month and one of 30 throughout Long Island closed in recent years up to then. It didn’t stay completely empty long — by December, the auditorium had been leased to producer Gary Grossman’s 250-seat dinner theater Theatre Tonight.

The curtain fell on that endeavor after a year. By then other organizations had offices in the former school, including Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Nassau County and an association for children with Down syndrome. But it was empty by summer 1979, when construction was underway to convert the school to 76 apartments. Newsday touted the "$1.3 million face-lift that includes a new mansard roof and Tudor-style stucco over its two-story brick exterior."

That November, its developer began promoting Heritage Square at East Meadow as "Nassau County's first new apartments in five years," advertising studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments starting at $375.

It's now Fairfield Square at East Meadow. Still priding itself as "a remodeled elementary school building" in rental listings, its apartments have "quartz countertops, tile plank floor, gray premium carpeting, gray paint, ceiling fans, high-hat lighting [and] central air conditioning." Some apartments also offer high ceilings, eat-in kitchens and walk-in closets. Studios rent for about $2,250, one-bedrooms for $2,550 to $3,080 and two-bedrooms from $3,195 to $3,295

While there may have been a school in the area as far back as 1775, the first recorded one, consisting of one room, appeared in 1857,  according to an official East Islip Union Free School District history. The following year, it was replaced by a two-room schoolhouse that burned down in 1885. Students spent the next two years in a temporary school nearby, then attended a newly built one on South Country Road — the future Main Street.

That one had expanded to nine rooms by 1905, and Long Island's burgeoning population necessitated a bigger facility. The three-story Main Street School, serving students K through 12, opened in September 1927. The former school was sold to a developer, who had it cut into six sections and moved to the west side of Laurel Avenue, where they were made into homes — possibly the earliest example of this on Long Island.   

In 1954, Main Street School expanded, adding two one-story wings. About 1960, with two new elementary schools built in the area by the end of the decade, siphoning off the lower grades, it became Main Street Junior-Senior High School. Three years later, it was a 1,000-student junior high school only, and remained that until closing in 1979.

A developer in the mid-1980s turned the original three-story part into offices and apartments — plus The Backstage Cafe restaurant in the principal's office and the BroadHollow Theatre Company's BayWay Arts Center in the auditorium.  The west wing became rental apartments and the east wing is now the medical facility Islip Primary Care.

As Fairfield at East Islip, it features one-story "villa style" apartments in the west wing and "loft" apartments in the theater building, both with "Tuscany-style" kitchen cabinets, stainless-steel appliances, ceramic-tile flooring and other amenities. Studios start at $2,140, with one-bedrooms ranging from $2,270 and $2,520 and two-bedrooms from $2,685 to $2,755.

Erected in 1923 for students in kindergarten through 8th grade, Lincoln School became known as Lincoln Elementary School after later becoming only K-6. On Sept. 13, 1971, it was sold to what is now AHRC Suffolk for use as a program center for children. The organization occupied the space as late as April 1976, but was gone by 1978. In the interim, the abandoned school had fallen victim to vandalism and disrepair. After the Huntington Community Development Agency proposed turning it into 30 low-income subsidized apartments, the Town of Huntington rezoned the property for such use in June 1979.

By March 1980, applications were being taken for one-, two- and three-bedrooms subsidized by the federal government's Section 8 program. Those chosen, based on income limits, would pay 25% of their income as rent. Occupied by July, and owned and managed by Huntington Housing Authority, it was dubbed Lincoln Manor.

By 1998, it was owned by Lincoln Farm Associates and renamed Lincoln Farm.

As of October 2015, the landlord was David Janz. Residents had good things to say about him when he "went above and beyond to makes us all feel comfortable," one tenant told a reporter in the aftermath of a fire that month that firefighters kept confined to the second-floor bedroom where it had originated.

But living there also has proved challenging at times. In December 2011, three suspects were arrested in what police called a gang-related shooting that had injured three people in a car the previous month. In August of that year, a man was shot in the foot outside the building. A 27-year-old Central Islip man suffered serious, but non-life-threatening injuries when shot in its parking lot in December 2020.

And even so, no one's leaving. Real estate sites show not a single apartment is available to rent.

Extra credit: More schools-turned-homes

Grand Street School in New Cassel was demolished by July 2014, Town of North Hempstead officials confirmed at the time. Today, the site houses The Homestead Senior Apartments.

In February, Concern Housing, a nonprofit housing developer, reached a deal with the Sisters of St. Joseph to convert the former Academy of St. Joseph in Brentwood into 140 affordable apartments.