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PS 6

Public school in Manhattan, New York City, United States

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
2 min read
Source updated August 6, 2026
Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

PS 6, The Lillie D. Blake School, is a public elementary school located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1894, PS 6 is regarded as the top elementary school in New York City.

01Overview

PS 6 has about 800 students in grades K-5. Average class sizes are 23-28. The school is popular with families on the Upper East Side who often choose to send their children there rather than to private school. The school's former Principal, Carmen Fariña, claimed that the acceptance rate for out of district students was 1/7, lower than that of many top-tier Universities.

02History

PS 6 was founded in 1894 and named after the feminist author and reformer Lillie Devereux Blake (though the school has misspelled her name, with an added "a" in Devereux). The school was originally located several blocks to the north on 85th Street. The current red-brick building on Madison Avenue between 81st and 82nd Streets was constructed in 1953.

The school's first principal, Katherine Devereux Blake, the daughter of the school's namesake, served in that capacity for 34 years and demanded that the pacifist hymn I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier be sung at every assembly.

03Academics

PS 6 is a Teacher's College "Mentor School." Students are expected to write plays, poetry, essays and short fiction by the time they graduate. The school also places a special emphasis on Art education. Its location, two blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, allows the students particularly good access to view the works of famous artists. PS 6 was also the recipient of a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to help fund art projects in the school.

04Special events

Peter Yarrow played a special benefit concert in the school's auditorium for many years to raise money for the school.

06Notable alumni

Watch videos about PS 6Explainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “PS 6”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

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