High School of Music & Art
public specialized high school in New York, New York, US
The High School of Music & Art (informally known as Music & Art or M&A) was a public specialized high school located at 443-465 West 135th Street in Manhattan, New York, from 1936 until 1984. In 1961, Music & Art and the High School of Performing Arts (est. 1947) were formed into a two-campus high school. The schools fully merged in 1984 into the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & the Arts.
Colloquially known as "The Castle on the Hill," the building which once housed Music & Art is located in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Harlem, in the campus of the City College of New York across the street from St. Nicholas Park. The building now houses the A. Philip Randolph Campus High School, a magnet school of the New York City Department of Education.
History
New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia started the high school in 1936, an event he described as "the most hopeful accomplishment" of his administration. As the mayor of New York City he wanted to establish a public school in which students could hone their talents in music, art and the performing arts. Music & Art was made up of three departments: Art, Instrumental Music, and Vocal Music.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “High School of Music & Art” is public specialized high school in New York, New York, US. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through High, School and Music, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7739610. The Library of Congress control number is n85006046. Authority coordinates are 40.818, -73.950. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1984, 1961 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “High School of Music & Art” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.