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Annunciation Boys School

Annunciation Boys School
Convent Avenue, New York City

Annunciation School is located in the area known as Vinegar Hill. The Hill traces its roots back to the early 1600s when it was under Dutch rule. Today an historic lamppost street sign, Vinegar Hill Corner, marks the northeast corner of 135th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, facing south, and pointing toward Convent Avenue, where in the early to mid-1900s, many convents were located.

In 1922, Bishop John J. Dunn, who was pastor of Annunciation Parish in Manhattan, requested that Dominican Sisters be sent from St. Mary of the Springs to staff the Boys' School at his parish. The girls were taught by the Madams of the Sacred Heart at their school across the street. The school went co-educational in 1953. From 1922 until 1978, the Dominican Sisters lived in the convent on top of the school and taught the children of Annunciation parish.

In 1922, the ethnicity of the neighborhood was primarily Irish, including many Irish immigrant families. Sisters now living at Mohun Health Care Center, located at the Motherhouse in Columbus, remember those early years and the challenges facing the families of Vinegar Hill. Education provided a way out and, beginning in 1922, the sisters provided that education. By the 1950s, many of the same challenges faced residents of the neighborhood, but the ethnic mix was changing. However, the poverty and crime did not change, but the sisters continued helping their students find ways to overcome these handicaps. "If the boys needed food or clothes," said Sr. Barbara Jinks (formerly Sr. Servatius), "we fed them and found clothes for them. You just did what needed to be done."

"The boys" remember too. An amazingly close-knit group, they have an Annunciation alumni group numbering in the hundreds and publish a newsletter, the Annunciation/Vinegar Hill Gazette.

The sisters left the parish in 1978, but the school remains a vital part of the ever-changing New York neighborhood.