Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the Philip Livingston Magnet Academy established?
The former Philip Livingston Magnet Academy is located along Northern Boulevard in the West Hill neighborhood of Albany, New York, United States. It is a large brick building predominantly in the Colonial Revival architectural style, with some Art Deco touches inside, erected during the 1930s. Additions were made in the 1960s. In 2014 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Philip Livingston Junior High School,[2] the only purpose-built public school building in the city so recognized.[lower-alpha 1]
Behind the three main entrance doorways is an interior vestibule. It has polished concrete floors, simulated stone walls and Art Deco piers. Three more doors, wooden with glass panels topped by five-light transoms, open into the main lobby.[1]
Albany established its first junior high schools in 1922, using space in its existing buildings. William Hackett, elected mayor that year, committed $1.5 million of the city's money to build its first junior high school. The school, designed by prominent local architect Marcus T. Reynolds and named after Hackett, opened its Delaware Avenue campus to 600 students in 1927.[1]
In September 1932 the school opened, now named for Philip Livingston, an Albany native who had signed the Declaration of Independence. Mayor John Boyd Thacher II proudly noted that despite its delayed opening, its enrollment was more than double Hackett's yet it had cost less to build. Its amenities included a thousand-seat auditorium, gymnasium, swimming pool and conservatory. "It would be difficult to find anywhere a building more satisfactorily planned and built, and more efficiently equipped," the school superintendent wrote in the district's annual report.[1] The school cafeteria's kitchen prepared food not just for its own students but for other schools in the city;[12] for its entire lifetime it remained the main office of the district's food-services department.[5]
The new junior high school model put students in grades seven through nine in a separate building, where they could be adjusted to the academic rigor expected of them at the high school level more slowly. Elsewhere in New York, Rochester became the first city to establish a junior high school in 1915. A year later the state's Education Department began encouraging other municipalities to start their own.[1]
The school continued in its role as a community and cultural center throughout the postwar years. Despite its access to larger and better space, the orchestra continued to give concerts there as late as the mid-1950s. For years, a local church raised money through performances of its gospel choir. A performance of The Mikado was staged there in 1958, and touring glee clubs and a cappella groups found the Philip Livingston auditorium an ideal venue.[1]
The concrete floors and simulated stone walls continue into the lobby. They are complemented by Art Deco pilasters rising to a coffered ceiling. Elaborate surrounds with cast stone entablatures frame the doorways to the two former main administrative offices off the lobby.[1]
Philip Livingston soon became one of the city's distinctive buildings, despite its location away from downtown. "Because of its great size, impressive appearance and splendid location," a 1936 guidebook to the Albany schools said, "it is considered Albany's outstanding school building ... It is the embodiment of the ideals of beauty and utility."[1]
From its inception the school played a role in developing the community, an early center of African American migration into Albany, beyond its educational function. The Albany Symphony Orchestra played its concerts in the building's auditorium for many years. Amelia Earhart spoke at the school, and a 1947 concert by Paul Robeson at the school caused a major local controversy when the city government attempted to block it due to the performer's known sympathies with the Communist Party.
Other notable people of the era made appearances at the building. Amelia Earhart spoke at the school at the end of 1935 just after she became the first person to fly solo over the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to California. The next year, dancer and choreographer Ted Shawn brought his Men Dancers to the auditorium's stage as part of his effort to show that ballet could be for men, too, an effort that culminated in the establishment of the annual Jacob's Pillow dance festival in nearby Western Massachusetts.[1]
The building did more than just educate students through early adolescence. Until the city canceled the program at Philip Livingston in 1938 due to declining enrollment, it hosted night school classes as well. Arbor Hill residents came to the school to cast their votes in election.[1]
A stone beltcourse divides the first and second stories. At the center a decorative wrought iron fence makes for a small balcony atop the entrance. The top of the fence is level with a ribbon course that also serves as the sill for windows on that story.[1]
However, over the last quarter of the 20th century the school itself began to decline. The building began showing signs of aging, at the same time as financial shortfalls led to maintenance being deferred. Within it, educational achievement began to decline as disciplinary problems rose. By the end of the century it was on the state's Persistently Dangerous Schools list. Pressure from parents in Arbor Hill led to the establishment of private charter schools in the area, and enrollment at Philip Livingston began to fall as that option became available to parents.[14]
In response to the protesters' concerns, the school district applied for grants from the Magnet Schools Assistance Program, established by the federal government under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The intent was to remake the school as a magnet school and thus ease racial segregation. By the early 1970s this had been done and the school was officially renamed Philip Livingston Magnet Academy.[1]
Under new leadership in the late 1990s, the school began to reverse those trends. By the late 2000s, it had been taken off the dangerous schools list, and student test scores were increasing again. However, the building's physical plant continued to deteriorate.[14]
The building itself is a three-story, "Y"-shaped, steel frame building clad in brick and cast stone. It consists of a three-story central pavilion with flanking wings themselves ending in pavilions. On the west of the central section is a shorter wing housing the building's auditorium.[1]
Within the block are two sets of staircases connecting the basement to the third floor. They are primarily metal, but with an additional wooden handrail. An elevator is also located on the south side.[1]
Albany established its public school system in 1796, shortly after American independence. In 1832 it built it first school building. Over the next century the state expanded the funding options available for local schools if they expanded their offerings in turn, such as providing secondary education. By the 1920s Albany's school district operated 25 elementary schools and its high school.[1]
Upstairs, a single open space was later partitioned into classrooms. They all have gypsum walls and modern dropped ceilings. All rooms have solid metal doors; some have closets with wood and glass doors. Metal staircases on either end of the section provide access to the roof.[1]
At the outset of construction the school district hoped to have the building completed in time for the 1930 school year. That estimate was pushed back a year when closing the land acquisitions took longer than expected, meaning grading and other site preparation was delayed. These delays in turn led to difficulties with the labor unions representing workers on the job, anxious with the onset of the Great Depression. By January 1931 only the foundation was complete.[1]
In 2005 the district diverted $19 million meant for maintenance to Philip Livingston to other schools instead. Two years later the superintendent proposed remodeling the building into a high school dedicated to engineering, nanotechnology and environmental science, but the school board rejected the idea. Parents, believing that the district was unwilling to make the necessary investments in the aging school, increasingly chose to send their children to the new charter schools in the Arbor Hill neighborhood.[14]
The school was built in response to increasing demands on the educational system, and changes in educational theory. During the 77 years it was open, it went from being a junior high school to a magnet school.[1]
Livingston Avenue and the former Philip Livingston Magnet Academy, both in Albany, New York, are named for him. A public school in Brooklyn, PS 261 in Boerum Hill, is named for him.
Cultural activities were also held in the auditorium. The recently established Albany Symphony Orchestra, then known as the People's Symphony of Albany, rehearsed there[5] and sometimes performed concerts. In 1934, its founder John Carabella, premiered his original work The Helderbergs, "a symphonic poem dedicated to the citizens of Albany", at Philip Livingston.[1]
The roof is clad in asphalt shingles. On the east side it is pierced by six segmental-arched dormer windows sided in copper. They are set with four-over-four double-hung sash with a lower hopper and four-light sides. Large scroll brackets mark the end of the north and south parapets.[1]