CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Richmond Hill High School (Queens)

secondary school in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York, United States of America

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ7330875 ↗
Source-derived summary

Richmond Hill High School is a four-year public high school in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York City, part of the New York City Department of Education.

History

Richmond Hill High School was founded in 1899, one year after Queens became part of New York City, in the then-bucolic setting of Richmond Hill. As such, it is the oldest high school south of Jamaica Avenue in Queens, New York City. Its first principal was Isaac Newton Failor (1851 to 1925), author of the longtime school book "Inventional Geometry" in 1904. He built an observatory on top of the building open to the students. The high school shared its facility with a local elementary school on the then Johnson Avenue. In 1899, the first students were admitted to the Johnson Avenue site, and in 1919 the current site was opened on 114th street. It has been voted the 100 U.S. Best High School in 2005. Today, the school is identified by the New York State Department of Education as one of the most persistently low achieving schools within the Department of Education. In 2024, the school, with its new principal, Tarek Alamarie, implemented new programs, such as a hydroponics lab, an Army JROTC program and a culinary class.

Editorial summary

“Richmond Hill High School (Queens)” enters the record as secondary school in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York, United States of America. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richmond, Hill and High can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1899, 1851, 1925, 1904—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Richmond, Hill and High.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Richmond Hill High School (Queens)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Richmond, Hill and High provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7330875. Authority coordinates are 40.695, -73.834. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1851, 1925 and 1904.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Richmond Hill High School (Queens)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Richmond Hill High School (Queens) primary sources, Richmond Hill High School (Queens) archive and Richmond research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Richmond Hill High School (Queens)”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Richmond Hill High School (Queens)” 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.