Little Red School House Founded by Elisabeth Irwin
Elisabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House in 1921 in the attic room of the P.S. 61 Annex at 535 East 16th Street as an alternative public elementary school. Parents and students loved the new dynamic learning community. It..Read More
First June Camp
From 1925 through the early 1960s, all LREI students spent the month of June in the country. This was called June Camp. LREI continues this tradition with a four-day trip for lower school students we now call the Farm Trip.
International Exhibit of Children’s Paintings Benefit
In 1934, LRSH organized the first International Exhibition of Children’s Painting at Rockefeller Center, representing work from forty countries. It honored the creativity of children on a scale that had never been imagined before, let alone attempted. Eleanor Roosevelt, the..Read More
Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, Pearl Bailey Perform at Benefit
Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, Pearl Bailey, and others perform at a benefit concert at Town Hall in 1943 to raise funds for the machine shop and science laboratory for wartime courses.
EI High School Song
Hear Tom Hurwitz, ’65, sing the Elisabeth Irwin High School song, written by David Roland, ’48 and Alan Garb, ’47. Listen to Hurwitz’s StoryLab interview where he talks about why the song is no longer sung, and about the only..Read More
Avon Long Performs at EI
Broadway star Avon Long performs at EI as part of Black History Week celebration.
Jack Gilford and Harry Belafonte Perform at LRSH Fundraiser
Third Annual Midnight Show of Stars to benefit the scholarship fund on Saturday, April 5, 1952 at the high school features Jack Gilford, Harry Belafonte and others. These annual fundraisers began at midnight and went well into the wee hours.
10s Play About Integration
A play by the 10s about integration was performed at an assembly in 1957, and then later at the high school. Teacher Mimi Levy transcribed phrases from class discussions of integration and turned their words into the script, which was..Read More
Lorraine Hansberry Visits Book Week
On November 5, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry visited students to talk about her writing, including the play A Raisin in the Sun, as part of Book Week. LREI prides itself on shrinking the distance between the schoolhouse and the “real world.”..Read More
LREI Intramural Basketball
LREI launches its all-inclusive intramural basketball program for fifth and sixth graders. Through participation on athletic teams students develop their physical skills and the ability to work together toward a common purpose; they also learn to represent the school within..Read More
“Hand in Hand” Benefit Concert
Hand in Hand: A benefit concert at NYU EIsner Lubin Hall for Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School featuring Peter, Paul, and Mary (’55), John Hammond, Eric Weissberg, The Robert DeCormier Singers, and other special guests.
An evening with LREI Parents Willem Dafoe (P’00), Harvey Keitel (P’97), and Richard Brown (P’94)
On a snowy Friday, January 6th, 1989, an enthusiastic audience of students, parents, and friends of the school enjoyed and evening with LREI parents Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel in a discussion moderated by noted film teacher and theorist Richard..Read More
New Rooftop Playground
Parents and faculty work together to construct new rooftop playground
First Founder’s Day Play
Every year, the LREI founder’s day play recounts how the parents of LREI met at an ice cream parlor and resolved to continue LREI as an independent school after the NYC Board of Education discontinued its funding as a public..Read More
The Bravest Girl: Ruby Bridges
In 2001, Shoshana and Suzanne’s first grade class read a book about Ruby Bridges, a first grader and the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on..Read More
The Laramie Project + Moisés Kaufman Lecture
LREI’s production of The Laramie Project premiered during election week of November 2016 – a fractious and memorable moment in political history, when hate speech was again on the rise. The students who participated in the play hosted an audience talkback..Read More
Back to School 2020-2021
LREI opened for in-person classes in October 2020 after several months of LREI@home. Masked, socially distanced, and with windows open through the winter, students and teachers rallied to find creative ways to make school not only a safe space for..Read More