St Paul's School (Garden City, New York)

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St. Paul's School is a 500 room brick edifice and historic landmark in the Village of Garden City, New York.

This beautiful building of High Victorian Gothic design, erected in 1879 along with the Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, and St. Mary's School, as a memorial to the multi-millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart, is currently vacant. It was originally an all-boys college preparatory and science boarding school owned by the Cathedral of the Incarnation in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. Its aim was professed by its headmaster Frederick Luther Gamage to be to "develop manly, Christian character, a strong physique, and the power to think."

The building was sold to the Incorporated Village of Garden City in 1993. The residents of Garden City are as of yet unable to come up with a viable reuse plan for this gorgeous architectural asset. The AIA Architectural Guide to Nassau and Suffolk Counties describes the building as having "poly-chromatic voussoir arched windows, elaborate cast-iron balustrades, and Dorchester stone trim." The highly elaborate, impressive, and imposing St. Paul's is beloved by many community members and remains structurally sound, but faces demolition if the village cannot agree to restore it. The building was selected in 2003 by the Preservation League of New York State as one of its "Seven to Save" endangered properties (view newsletter). On December 16, 2004 the Village Board of the Incorporated Village of Garden City voted to dedicate the 48 acre (194,000 m²) St Paul's School site as Parkland. This virtually eliminates any possibility of private use of the school building and may lead to its demolition if an acceptable public use cannot be found.