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George Downing was Thomas Downing's son and attend the Mulberry Street School at the same time as Peter Guignon. Following in his father's footsteps, he opened a catering business on Broadway, then moved to Newport, Rhode Island where he built a very… Read More

James McCune Smith did this drawing of Benjamin Franklin while attending the Mulberry Street School. Smith was a top student and his intellectual brillance was recognized by teachers, students, and school trustees alike. Maybe Smith harbored the… Read More

Born in New York City in 1813, James McCune Smith referred to himself as “the son of a self-emancipated bond-woman” who owed his “liberty to the Emancipation Act of the State of New York.” He attended the Mulberry Street… Read More

This drawing of the African Free School on Mulberry Street was done by one of its students, John Burns. Read More

The African Free School no. 2 on Mulberry Street was one of several schools for black children established by the New York Manumission Society from the late eighteenth century on. It offered an exceptionally good education for a charity school of… Read More

Born in 1786, Peter Williams Jr. affiliated with Trinity Church in the first decade of the nineteenth century. He was among the group of parishioners who pushed for the establishment of a separate and independent black parish. After years of… Read More

St. Philip's Episcopal Church was the tenth parish of Trinity Church, the place of worship of many of New York's white elite families. After repeated demands by its black parishioners, Trinity finally agreed in 1818 to the establishment of a… Read More

By 1810, the intersection of five streets—Mulberry, Anthony (now Worth), Cross (now Park), Orange (now Baxter), and Little Water (no longer in existence)—was the center of a neighborhood referred to as the Five Points. Built on the "made… Read More