Bayard Rustin Educational Complex

The Bayard Rustin Educational Complex - also known as the Humanities Educational Complex - at West 18th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a "vertical campus" of the New York City Department of Education which contains a number of small public schools, most of them high schools — grades 9 through 12 – along with one combined middle and high school – grades 6 through 12.The building formerly housed Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities (M440), a comprehensive school which graduated its last class in the 2011-2012 school year.HistoryThe building - which is actually two buildings, one on 18th Street and the other on 19th Street, connected in the middle - was constructed in 1930 as Textile High School, a vocational high school for the textile trades, complete with a textile mill in the basement; the school yearbook was titled The Loom. It was later renamed Straubenmuller Textile High School after the vocational education pioneer Gustave Straubenmuller, then renamed Charles Evans Hughes High School after Governor of New York and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.