A goofy 1970s Greenwich Village class photo

It’s about that time of year for the annual school ritual known as picture day.

In 1976, these adorable second graders from P.S. 41 on West 11th Street posed as a class. (This is before class size was an issue in schools, of course—there are 35 kids in that photo!).

Colored tights, prairie skirts and dresses, bowl cuts, and Michael Jackson iron-on shirts were all the rage among mid-1970s downtown kids—or at least their parents, who went to local discount stores like Mays for their offspring’s stylin’ wardrobes.

Get a kick out of city class photos from the 1970s and 1913 here.

Rhinelander Gardens: then and now

Designed by James Renwick—architect of Grace Church on Tenth Street and Broadway and St. Patrick’s Cathedral—these “three-decker” row houses stood at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 11th Street since 1855.

I’m not sure what connection they have to the Rhinelanders—an old New York family—but the family probably owned the land they were built on, hence the name.

Another Rhinelander real estate site is just around the corner on Seventh Avenue.

Berenice Abbott took the photo in 1937. Rhinelander Gardens only lasted another 20 years. Amazingly, the city tore them down (and their lovely front lawns and cast-iron balconies!) to build P.S. 41.

The school is very 1950s. The tenement apartment building on the far right, the Unadilla, still exists.

Lost New York, by  Nathan Silver, published in 1967, has this to say:

“The setback fronts of the houses were the result of the imperfect match of the old Greenwich Village street pattern with the upper Manhattan grid. Some deep fronts can still be seen on 11th Street, but the Rhinelander row was demolished in the late 1950s.”