Eastern District High School is a defunct high school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, originally located at Driggs Avenue and South 3rd Street, then 227 Marcy Avenue, and finally 850 Grand Street. It was a comprehensive high school. It remained in service from the turn of the 20th Century until the city closed the school in Spring of 1996.The third building at Grand Street reopened in the fall of 1996 as Grand Street Campus, with several smaller schools operating within the same facilities.HistoryAs Eastern District High SchoolOriginal buildingsThe school was proposed in 1894, prior to unification of the five boroughs of New York City. The name "Eastern District" originates from the annexation of Williamsburg and Bushwick into the city of Brooklyn as its Eastern District in 1855. The school held its first classes on February 5, 1900, with 188 students. It was originally located at a temporary site on Driggs Avenue and South 3rd Street on the north side of the Williamsburg Bridge, converted from the former Eastern District Library. In 1902, operations were expanded to the nearby Henry McCaddin Memorial Hall at 288 Berry Street between South 2nd and South 3rd Streets. McCaddin Hall still stands adjacent to the Saints Peter and Paul Church, and later served as a school for the Catholic parish, as well as a library and a concert hall. Eastern District graduated its first class in 1904. Later, Public School 143 on North Ninth Street and Havemeyer Street was used as a third annex.The second location, opened in fall 1907, was situated in western Williamsburg on Marcy Avenue between Keap Street and Rodney Street. It sat across the street from the Williamsburgh branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and near the Marcy Avenue Station of the BMT Jamaica Line. The H-shaped building was constructed with gray brick, limestone, and terracotta in Collegiate and English Gothic style.
